


Everything, Everything, Everything

by steveharringtonkin



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Bisexual Steve Harrington, Coming of Age, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Feelings Realization, Gay Jonathan Byers, M/M, POV Steve Harrington, Past Child Abuse, Period Typical Attitudes, Period-Typical Homophobia, Recreational Drug Use, Slow Burn, Starcourt Mall (Stranger Things), Underage Drinking, big 80s mall vibes, it's very brief and not graphic but deserves a warning, jonathan works at hotdog on a stick, season 3 but it's gay and there are no monsters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-17
Updated: 2020-10-14
Packaged: 2021-02-23 07:53:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 32,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23708167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/steveharringtonkin/pseuds/steveharringtonkin
Summary: When he faces the mall again, he suddenly gets a pretty good feeling that he knows what Robin’s dropped book just experienced. Hot Dog on a Stick Girl is gone, but Steve randomly remembers that her name is Jessica. It doesn’t matter, though, because in her place is one Jonathan Byers. He looks like he’s considering a murder-suicide plot and if Jessica looks dumb in the stripey uniform, Jonathan looks like he’s on summer vacation from a stint in the circus.Or... Steve and Jonathan work opposite each other in the newly-opened Starcourt Mall.
Relationships: Jonathan Byers/Steve Harrington, Robin Buckley & Steve Harrington
Comments: 57
Kudos: 176





	1. The New Guy

**Author's Note:**

> is there any better time to start fic writing than in quarantine? there's simply not enough stonathan content in the world and someone's gotta do something about that.

Steve can’t keep staring at those ugly uniforms or he’s gonna die. He knows he has less than no room to talk, seeing as his manager is some sick freak who decided on sailor’s uniforms, but at least his legs look good in the stupid shorts. As he watches the girl across the way straighten her hat for what feels like the millionth time, Steve’s hand slips out from under his jaw and his head rocks forward before he recovers and straightens up. He can hear Robin chuckle from behind him and he flips her off under the counter before he even turns to look at her. 

They’ve been stuck in this hell together for a little bit over a month now and he guesses they’re friends. They don’t hang out outside of work, but it’s not for Steve’s lack of trying. Every night spent closing up is a night that Steve asks Robin to catch a late movie at the Hawk or just drive around town with him blasting music he’s pretty sure she’d hate. Okay, so maybe he can’t blame her for turning him down. He’s considered asking her to come over and get high with him, but he’s only 99% sure she wouldn’t narc on him and his dad will kick his ass into next summer if he loses this stupid job. Maybe one day he’ll find a subtle way to raise that percentage to 100, but he doesn’t think they’re there just yet. 

Robin’s reading some book written a hundred years ago for class next year and Steve’s already listened to as much as he possibly can about the shitty writing and boring character development, so he doesn’t bother her about it and thanks God he’s graduated. Sure, he’s so bored it feels like his eyes are gonna melt out of his skull, but at least he isn’t stuck reading awful books with words he’s never heard in his life anymore. It’s a weak victory, but a victory nonetheless.

Letting out a soft sigh, Steve lets his cheek come to rest back on his palm as his eyes sweep over the mall. It’s 11:00 am on a Thursday and the mall is littered with elderly ladies who would probably coo at him and pinch his cheeks if they hadn’t sworn off ice cream as part of whatever weird fad diets they were into this week. Steve’s not sure if he’s desperate enough for something to do that he’d prefer their patronage over this endless boredom just yet, but he thinks about some tiny ladies with silver hair calling him sweetie and telling him he looks like a modern James Dean and decides maybe it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. Robin would hate it and that would be entertaining for a little bit while she mimed gagging and rolled her eyes as they doted on him. Maybe he was cursing those fad diets just as much as the old ladies. He could use the attention and the ego boost, though he’d deny it if Robin accused him of wanting it.

When he glances up at the clock, he’s only lost about ten minutes thinking about the old ladies, which still kinda seems like too long. He knows it’s just too early for anyone even remotely close to his age to come in and he still has five whole hours of this shift ahead of him. Dustin had mentioned coming to visit when Steve drove him to D&D yesterday, but he’d never specified what time and since his personal chauffeur was busy being bored out of his mind in the world’s worst outfit, Steve figured it was pretty unlikely that was actually going to happen.

His mind wanders again, this time to two summers ago and the person he was back then. He figures that guy would call him a loser and laugh at his stupid little hat, which, you know, can’t blame him for that. Sometimes he feels so disconnected from who he was in high school that it’s like thinking about someone else entirely. A summer spent smoking cigarettes and shotgunning beers with his friends, partying every weekend, and chasing girls like Nancy Wheeler feels about a million miles away from where he is right now. Now, if he was pressed to list off his friends, Steve’s pretty sure he’d only really be able to count Dustin. God, that’s depressing. His only friend is a literal child who’s still somehow more popular than him. He figures he could count Robin, but sometimes he’s not sure that she doesn’t still see him as King Steve: Douchebag Extraordinaire. 

Steve lets his head fall forward on purpose this time, a heavy groan slipping from his lips as he closes his eyes. He can hear Robin snap her book shut and turn from her spot on the ledge by the window leading to the back room, so he lifts his head to look at her. She’s already rolling her eyes by the time he meets them and yeah, he expected that.

“Okay. What’s your deal?” She asks, and this time it’s Steve’s turn to roll his eyes at her tone. “Do you think you’re the only bored person in the whole entire world right now?”

“Actually, yeah. At least you have your shitty book.”

“Maybe you could use this valuable time to learn how to read, Stevie,” Robin quips, smirking at him from over her raised book. “Do you wanna borrow it? It might be a little bit above your reading level, but I’ll help you sound out the hard words.”

“Ha, you’ve used that one already this week and it’s only Thursday. Try again,” he replies, turning his back on the seating area to hop up on the counter beside the register. 

“I’m just saying. I’m bored, too, and it’s definitely way worse for me.”

“Yeah? Why’s that?” Steve asks, bringing his left leg up so he can rest his arm over his bent knee. 

“I’m bored and I’m trapped here with you. You can’t imagine the agony I’m in right now.”

Steve flips her off again, this time without a care as to who could see him do it. He’s grinning, though, and Robin’s grinning right back and he thinks that maybe he could count her as a friend without her kicking his ass about it. 

“Maybe you could use this time to try to learn some funny jokes,” he replies, dropping his head back so she can’t see him genuinely smiling.

“It really isn’t my fault that you’re so easy to make fun of. Besides, it’s a fun little role reversal,” Robin says, leaning her back against the wall again and propping her feet up against the one parallel.

“Shut up,” Steve shoots back, wishing he was as quick and clever as Robin with his comebacks. He thinks maybe that’s what he should waste time doing, but even the thought seems pathetic, so he dismisses it just as quickly as it came. 

“I can’t believe you don’t think this is thrilling, honestly. Every time I look up, Hot Dog on a Stick Girl is finding a new way to make that hat look worse.”

Steve laughs despite himself and glances over his shoulder to see the aforementioned girl disappear into the back. He thinks he knew her name at some point, and Robin definitely knows it because she’s crazy good at memorizing stuff, but they started referring to her as Hot Dog on a Stick Girl a couple of weeks ago and it was that mutual bullying that marked the awkward beginning of their tenuous friendship. Calling her anything else now would just feel weird and probably break whatever spell Robin is under that makes her think maybe Steve’s not so bad. 

“I feel bad for them, honestly. Like, sure, we look stupid, too, but I’m way hotter than any of those nerds over there,” Steve says, grinning again when Robin snorts derisively. 

“I heard they hired some new guy. I think he’s supposed to start soon. Today, maybe,” she says, opening her book again even though Steve knows he’s distracted her just enough to keep her from actually going back to reading how she likes. “Isn’t that so exciting?” She asks, her tone of voice telling Steve she thinks it’s the exact opposite of exciting. 

“Oh, yeah. From Hot Dog on a Stick Girl to Hot Dog on a Stick Boy. I think this is the most exciting day of my life,” Steve returns just as dryly.

Robin laughs as she looks back across the mall to the booth, but the laughter quickly dies as her face slips into shock. Before Steve can even turn his own head, Robin is laughing again, this time hysterically. Her book slips from her hands and clatters to the ground as she snorts and Steve figures one of the old ladies power walking by just did something particularly embarrassing. He’s preemptively sad he missed it, but he turns anyways, just in case there’s even a remainder of a spectacle.

When he faces the mall again, he suddenly gets a pretty good feeling that he knows what Robin’s dropped book just experienced. Hot Dog on a Stick Girl is gone, but Steve randomly remembers that her name is Jessica. It doesn’t matter, though, because in her place is one Jonathan Byers. He looks like he’s considering a murder-suicide plot and if Jessica looks dumb in the stripey uniform, Jonathan looks like he’s on summer vacation from a stint in the circus. 

Steve knows he’s already been looking too long and that he needs to start laughing with Robin before she has a lot of questions to ask him, but he hasn’t really seen Jonathan since the last round of monster shit threatened to kill them all and he feels like he’s just been pushed into his parents’ pool in the middle of January. Steve can’t even remember the last time they had an actual conversation that didn’t end in a fistfight and now Jonathan’s less than a hundred feet away from him, looking downright miserable. 

It doesn’t seem like Jonathan has noticed him yet, so Steve whips his head back around and plasters on a smile he hopes will fool Robin. She’s still laughing a little, but the ferocity from earlier has long since died down. He decides to let her talk first and follow her lead from there because he has no idea what to say. Thankfully, Robin always has plenty of things to say about pretty much everything. 

“Holy shit. Jonathan Byers. Mr. Sulky Brooding Photographer is currently standing across from us wearing a color more vibrant than dark green,” she ribs and Steve can’t help but laugh along with her. “More than one even! Oh, my god. Is it Christmas? Is Christmas in early July now and no one told me?”

Steve is still laughing, mostly in awe of how enthused Robin is by this relatively minor development. That’s the level of boredom they’ve reached, he guesses, but he really can’t blame her for finding it so funny. He’s personally never seen Jonathan branch out from earthy, dark-colored clothing that looks about four sizes too big for him and it’s startling, to say the least. 

“Don’t laugh and maybe he’ll spare you when he decides he’s too embarrassed to go on and takes us all down with him,” Steve jokes and Robin laughs again as she reaches for her book, dangling precariously off the counter. “Hey, hey. Don’t do that. I’m not losing my job because you stained Richard’s floors with blood from your totally preventable head wound.”

Robin sticks her tongue out at him, but slides off the ledge properly to gather the book up, letting Steve’s heart rate slowly return to normal. Jesus, he’s definitely been spending way too much time around the kids, that’s for sure. 

“Yes, mom,” she says and Steve wishes he hadn’t wasted a perfectly good middle finger on her earlier remarks because he’d love to flip her off, but it feels like overkill at this point.

“I take it back. Crack your head open. Just don’t come crying to me when you need someone to drive you to the hospital.”

“Ouch,” Robin says as she jumps back up to her previous spot and looks back over at Jonathan. 

Steve watches as Robin gives the fakest smile he’s ever seen and waves lightly. Despite himself, he lets his gaze wander back, too, finding Jonathan’s eyes already on him. He feels like a deer in headlights, which is exactly how Jonathan looks. The odds of him not knowing Steve works at Scoops seem slim considering how often Will and his gang of misfit toys come in to bother him, but maybe Jonathan didn’t expect him to be working right now. To keep from looking like a total freak, Steve raises his hand in a quick wave and gives his own forced smile.

He doesn’t hate Jonathan, obviously. After all the monster shit, it seemed kind of messed up to hold any grudges, even if Jonathan had stolen Nancy right out from under him. If anything, he figures Jonathan still hates him for how he’d been back in the alley two years ago, and his suspicions are more or less confirmed when Jonathan doesn’t wave back and instead disappears from behind the register into the back. Steve pushes a hand back through his hair nervously and schools his expression into indifference as he redirects his attention to Robin. His stupid hat is off-kilter now, but he tosses it off to the side instead of trying to fix it. Company policy his ass.

“Ouch,” she says again, but Steve knows it’s for a different reason this time and tries to ignore the uncomfortable sensation he’s feeling in his chest. “What’d you do to deserve such a frosty reception from him?”

Steve doesn’t really want to answer the question, especially because Robin genuinely seems to like him despite their constant bickering, but he figures he should be honest if he’s actually dedicated to this whole “being a better person” thing. He takes a deep breath and wraps his arms around his knees.

“I said some messed up shit to him when his brother was missing and he broke my nose and then stole my girlfriend,” Steve says, and he hates the way the guilt he still feels is so obvious in the tone of voice he was hoping he would sound nonchalant. 

It’s pretty much the truth, except he doesn’t really see Jonathan and Nancy’s relationship as the result of a theft. He’d lost Nancy way before she and Jonathan hooked up and he knew it. The pang of regret he always feels when he thinks about his and Nancy’s relationship still lingers, but he really doesn’t miss her like he did when they first broke up. If anything, he just misses having someone. It’s really not about Nancy anymore, and Steve thinks they’re probably better together than he and Nancy were anyways; two smart, driven go-getters who might actually understand each other. At the end of the day, Steve is happy for them and he isn’t bitter. Mostly. 

Robin lapses into a heavy silence and Steve figures this is the end of their brief little friendship. Instead of saying something in response, she jumps down from the counter and plasters on a smile before delivering a canned performance of the lines they’re supposed to give to customers when they come in. Steve hears footsteps behind him and nearly falls trying to get down from the counter fast enough to avoid complaints. He’s greeted by the sight of three middle school girls all giggling and blushing while they look at him and he thinks, oh, the old ladies would definitely be better than this.


	2. The Disaster

When the girls finally clear out after taking an eternity to make a decision on something as complicated as which ice cream flavor to choose, Robin is back to being uncomfortably quiet. Steve silently begs the old ladies to decide that now is the time to ditch the diets, but no one comes to his rescue. Typical.

He doesn’t know why he cares so much what Robin thinks about him, but maybe it’s because she’s the closest thing he has to a friend his own age and he really doesn’t want the guy he used to be to ruin it. Maybe he knows exactly why he cares so much after all. Steve wants to say something so badly, but he has no clue how to approach the conversation and he’s not used to not knowing how to talk to people like this. 

Robin’s back up on the counter again and she’s holding her book, but she hasn’t cracked it open yet, so Steve figures he’s not quite off the hook. He clears his throat loudly and resumes his own position across from her, dragging a sweaty hand through his hair as he tries to come up with some stupid joke to get him out of this. Right as he opens his mouth to speak, Robin sets her book down and starts to talk.

“How old were you?” She asks, and she won’t look at him, which makes Steve wish the floor would open up and swallow him whole. 

“What?”

“When you… bullied him or whatever. How old were you?”

“I- uh, sixteen. It was three years ago.” Steve says, not quite sure where Robin is going with the question, but now that he’s started talking, it’s hard to stop. “It’s so stupid. The whole thing was stupid. He… took these pictures of Nancy and I at my house and it was weird and creepy, but— but I was an asshole. His brother was missing. We thought he was dead. I have no idea what the hell I was thinking.”

Steve’s shoulders are hunched as he hugs his knees to his chest tight in a futile attempt to soothe himself. He feels like the biggest jerk in the whole world recounting what happened to Robin and he totally expects her to treat him like dirt after the confession. Even if she does, that’s better than what he deserves. Robin still isn’t looking at him and he can feel bile raising in the back of his throat as he waits for her to say something.

“You feel bad about it,” she says after a pause.

Steve can’t tell if it’s a question or not, but he’s nodding immediately. Of course he feels bad. He’s spent three years changing everything about himself in hopes that maybe one day he’d stop feeling bad about pushing a boy he’d never even seen tackle someone in gym class to beat the shit out of him. As distant as they’d been for the past few years, Steve remembers Jonathan in elementary and middle school as this shy, soft little kid who just wanted to fly under the radar and get good grades. He’d always been the complete opposite of Steve, who was brave and brash and outgoing from the day he was born, but Steve had always quietly liked that about him.

He’s been quiet too long, just nodding and staring down at his shoes, so he hazards a glance back up at Robin to find her looking at him intently. Steve’s pretty sure the guilt is visibly radiating off of him at this point, but Robin’s expression is as hard to read as ever. 

“Yeah, I feel bad about it,” he finally says. “How could I not? He was in hell and I was, what? Worried about being popular and looking tough for my friends? So stupid,” he mutters with a shake of his head. “If you wanna, like, punch me again on his behalf, have at it,” he jokes. 

“You were a real douche back then,” Robin says, but her voice is soft and it washes over Steve in waves. 

It kind of hits him all at once, that she doesn’t sound accusatory in the least and Steve doesn’t want to get his hopes up, but it feels like repenting in a way he’s never gotten to before. She says it like she sees him for who he is now instead of who he was when he was sixteen and scared. The words are said with no malice, as if she’s forgiving him on behalf of all the people like her that he used to make feel small. Steve isn’t a big crier, and he definitely isn’t going to cry while he’s already dealing with the embarrassment of too-short shorts and a cap that reads “AHOY!”, but only because years of discipline have taught him how to shove that shit down deep and leave it there. 

“I know.”

“You’re kinda unrecognizable now.”

“Oh, yeah. It’s that fucking hat. Totally hides my best feature,” Steve jokes, and it’s fragile, but Robin laughs and nods seriously.

“Absolutely. I think that’s really your big issue, Popeye,” Robin teases, tipping her head back against the wall.

“Shut up,” Steve says, but he’s laughing, too, and everything feels okay. Jonathan still hates him, sure, but if he can win over Robin, then maybe changing Jonathan’s mind isn’t the impossible feat it’s always felt like. 

The whole conversation is almost startlingly brief, but the mall is starting to get a little busier as people make their way in for post lunchtime shopping, and Steve is so relieved for a break from their earlier boredom he could almost cry. The tension between him and Robin is virtually nonexistent as they pretend to care about their jobs for the next hour or two of the rush and Steve is more grateful for Robin now than he’s ever been. He catches himself looking over at her every so often and just smiling to himself as they serve countless preteens and their exasperated parents. 

The entirety of the day passes similarly— occasionally dull, but easy enough. When his shift ends, Steve clocks out mechanically and grabs his backpack full of Real People Clothes before ducking into the employee bathroom to change. He knows Robin still has another hour of her shift left by herself before James, the freckled-faced sophomore Steve almost never works with, comes in to cover her, so he’s not in much of a hurry. Steve still dresses quickly, years of rushing in and out of locker rooms having drilled a sense of urgency into him, but he spends a while looking at himself in the scratched up mirror that hangs above the sink. The bathroom lighting is horrible, emphasizing every flaw that somehow feels less glaring under the fluorescents that illuminate the rest of the mall. 

He looks tired and he’s kind of surprised that Robin didn’t call him on it when she showed up this morning, but maybe it’s the kind of tired only the person used to seeing their own face every day can recognize. Staring at himself like this is only tunneling his confidence into the ground, so Steve shoves his uniform into his backpack haphazardly and fusses with his hair for a minute to get it to lay right before he exits. When he emerges, Robin is talking to an older couple, so he takes up residence at one of the tables and waits for her to have a free moment. 

While he waits, Steve lets his eyes skim the mall again. It’s early evening now, and the food court is filled with people Steve used to think were his friends. He watches idly as they mingle about mindlessly. They’re laughing, eating, talking, and living their lives so easily without him. It’s hard to believe that things used to be so different, honestly, and actually, he’s getting way too in his head right now. 

Physically shaking himself out of it, Steve aims to turn back to Robin, but he feels the prickly sensation of someone’s eyes on him. It only takes about ten seconds to locate the source of the feeling, his eyes meeting narrowed ones across the courtyard. Jonathan is definitely staring at him, but the second Steve meets his gaze, Jonathan ducks his head and goes back to talking to the girl working alongside him.

Steve finally looks back to see Robin still trapped in conversation with the couple and he feels for her, really, but his stomach is starting to protest the fact that everyone around him is eating some approximation of dinner and all he’s given it so far today was one banana he’d swiped from the back. Before he’s really thought it through, Steve is on his feet, slinging his backpack casually over one shoulder as he crosses the distance between Scoops Ahoy and the primary colored disaster that rests across from it. Jonathan’s coworker is still chatting his ear off, but Jonathan looks incredibly interested in some spot on the floor, so he doesn’t even see Steve coming. 

When Jonathan finally does look up, Steve watches his face as he seemingly experiences every possible human emotion at once before he can control his features and slap on a look of complete indifference. Steve feels kinda bad for clearly startling him; still, he tries to ignore it and soldier on like normal. Sure, Jonathan definitely hates him, but he’s really not trying to start something. He just doesn’t think he can eat mandarin chicken even one more time this week without his stomach making an evacuation plan to convince him to take a break.

Putting on a casual smile, Steve raises his chin in silent greeting. He feels weirdly nervous that Jonathan is gonna tell him to kick rocks, which would sure make working two hundred feet away from the guy for the next couple of months incredibly awkward. 

“Hey, Byers,” he says, smiling and keeping the tone of his voice friendly and charming. “Uh, Jonathan?” he quickly corrects, figuring calling someone by their last name seems way too much like something cartoon villains would do. He doesn’t mean for it to come out like a question, but it does, and he thinks maybe he should have taken his chances on the chicken. 

Jonathan’s full attention is on him now, and Steve felt less awkward when he kissed a girl for the first time in fifth grade than he does in this horrible, horrible moment. He thinks about just making his excuses and making a break towards the other side of the mall, but Robin will never let him hear the end of it if he doesn’t stick this disastrous conversation out. As it is, she’s gonna be giving him shit for a week at least. 

“You hang out with my little brother three times a week and you still have to ask me my name?” Jonathan quips.

Steve thinks that maybe it would have been okay if those demo-whatevers had eaten him alive in the junkyard if it would have saved him from having this interaction with Jonathan. He’s more embarrassed than he can remember being in years, but at this point, he’s pretty sure there’s no way he could fumble this any more than he already has and that’s an oddly reassuring thought.

“No, I… of course I know your name!” Steve says. “Even if I didn’t, it’s so nicely printed for me on your little hat,” he adds, determined not to be the only one getting burned.

The cheap shot clearly works, because Jonathan’s face goes a little flushed and his mousy coworker makes some excuse about needing to get something from the back. Even though the mall is pretty crowded, it feels like the silence between them drags on for ages, making Steve reconsider his plan to just head for the hills. 

“What do you want?” Jonathan asks, but this time it’s bristly and uncertain. Steve feels like he’s watching a cat back into a corner with its hackles raised and he really wishes he had that car Alex P. Keaton has so he could go back in time and try this all over again. 

“Uh, could I just get a hot dog?” He asks, not wanting to push Jonathan any further. 

The question seems to remind Jonathan that he is in fact working right now, and he springs into action like an old animatronic figure. Steve watches him make the food in silence, but he wants to say more and make sure Jonathan knows he’s not here to give him hell, so he starts rambling again. 

“I wasn’t asking for your name,” he clarifies when Jonathan’s back is turned. “Of course I know your name. Will talks about you, like, 24/7. I just know that you hate me and everything, so I didn’t know which was worse, going with your last name and coming off like a douche or going with your first name and making it sound like we’re friends. I just… came to get dinner,” he finishes lamely, watching as Jonathan stills after putting his food into the little paper carton. 

Slowly, Jonathan turns to hand off the hotdog, the expression on his face stony and reserved. Steve doesn’t think he’s said anything horribly offensive or wrong, but it feels like now is as good a time as any to cut his losses and get the hell out of there. He pulls a twenty out of his wallet and sets it on the counter before Jonathan can say anything else.

“Just keep the change,” he says before swiping some ketchup packets and making a hasty retreat towards the doors that lead out to the parking lot. If Jonathan says anything in response, Steve can’t possibly hear it over the sound of his sneakers smacking against the tile floor and the racing of his own heart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have a couple of chapters already written, so I'm hoping to update this fairly frequently! 
> 
> thank u to liam for being the best beta and making this fic the best it can be i could not do this without u


	3. The Proposal

This was not the plan. Steve doesn’t know why he had thought he could just swing in and say something funny or stupid and the past would just be forgotten immediately. Jonathan probably wasn’t the type to look past things that easily, but Steve figured now he’d never know, since he wasn’t planning on ever speaking to him again. Every chance he had to make things right with the guy ended more or less the same; Steve would run his mouth, either get cut off or cut himself off and give up on the whole thing while still hoping that Jonathan might find it in himself to let the past go.

Even if his other attempts to make amends had failed, Steve hadn’t expected to stick his foot in his mouth and all but run away from Jonathan to hide out in his car. It’s been, like, a minute or two tops since he clumsily slammed the driver’s side door and his car already smells like ketchup and deep-fried meat did a gross tango with the stress sweat that made an appearance the second Steve was in front of Jonathan. It’s a horrible combo, but it sort of feels like he deserves to sit in it as punishment for ruining everything once again.

His heart's still pounding in his ears as he shoves the food into his mouth, and in his haste to get out of there, Steve had forgotten to grab mustard. He regrets it big time and his corndog is definitely suffering for it. The dry breading is making his mouth feel like the desert in July and somehow, even that isn’t the worst of his problems right now. There’s really no part of the last ten minutes he doesn’t regret. 

Steve groans and lets his head gently bump against the steering wheel as he slumps forward. His previously insistent appetite is completely gone now, but he forces himself to finish the shitty corn dog as he starts the engine and turns up the radio. The new Madonna song from that movie he’d seen advertised at the Hawk a couple of months ago is playing and Steve would never tell anyone, but he kind of loves it. The song distracts him just a little bit from his absolute failure of an interaction with Jonathan as he shifts into drive and heads back towards his house. Silently, Steve prays that Jonathan won’t be scheduled at the same time he is tomorrow so that he can lick his wounds in peace.

When he arrives back at the house, his parents’ cars are both absent from the garage and he thinks he should probably care more than he does about being left alone again. He checks the clock as he heads upstairs, tossing his backpack haphazardly down onto the chair that rests in the corner of the room. Steve only makes it about two steps away before his mother’s voice echoes in his head, chastising him for being so careless with his things and the overall state of his bedroom. With a sigh, Steve pulls out his uniform and hangs it carefully before situating his bag in the closet below it.

If he hadn’t blown it with Jonathan, he’d probably be waiting for Robin to get off work in a few minutes so he could bug her about hanging out tonight. She would have said no, but at least he would’ve killed an hour waiting around for her shift to end. Steve feels like they made some sort of real connection today, one that went deeper than shared misery and mutual teasing, and he’s struck with that same excitement he’d felt his first day of kindergarten when he’d come home with the news that he’d made a new friend. If he stops to think about it, some part of him kind of always feels like that clumsy six-year-old who just wanted all the attention in any given room to be on him at all times. It still sometimes feels like no matter how old he gets, he’ll always need to put on a show to make people like him. 

With all these thoughts racing around his head, Steve flops heavily down onto his mattress and rolls onto his front so he can bury his face in the pillows. Eventually, he musters the energy to click on the TV he’d begged to have in his room a couple years back, but nothing really catches his attention. Instead, his mind drifts to the way Robin and the kids make him feel like maybe he doesn’t have to put on a performance any time he does anything, which is nice, if a little weird. Even if it had been a long time since he’d held the notoriety he had in high school, he’d spent so long being a dick that not being one still feels foreign sometimes. It had never really come naturally to him to be so mean, not the way it had to guys like Tommy Hagan. 

Looking back now, Steve can’t believe he’d spent a decade thinking that Tommy was his best friend. Sure, he knew that Tommy’s birthday was November 30th and that his favorite flavor of ice cream was butter pecan and he always preferred redheads to blondes or brunettes, but when it came down to it, Steve had never known anything about Tommy that actually mattered. Hell, he’s known Robin for a fraction of the time he was friends with Tommy, but he already knows way more important stuff about her. He knows that she’s scared of deep water but loves the beach and that she’s fluent in about a hundred languages and she keeps track of how many books she’s read in her life. Maybe tomorrow he’ll ask her what the running total actually is. 

Those things aren’t really that important and he knows it, but he thinks it’s quality over quantity when it comes to knowing stuff about the people he cares about. The point is, Robin has the kind of depth Tommy never seemed to and he really, really likes it. He has depth, too, maybe, but he’s spent most of his life never allowed to be anything other than King Steve. If nothing else, he likes the guy he’s becoming a lot better than that asshole, that’s for sure.

The shrill ringing of the phone on his bedside table breaks Steve out of his thoughts and he fumbles to answer it, taking a deep breath and remembering the way his parents like him to present himself over the phone. He puts on his fake polite voice, sitting up a little straighter in bed as if the person on the other line can see him slouched in his bed like a neanderthal. 

“Harrington residence, this is Steve...n,” he says awkwardly, cursing himself for forgetting such a stupid formality. If it’s one of his parents’ friends or business associates calling, he’s never going to hear the end of it when his parents get back home.

“Steven?” Asks the voice on the other line.

It’s Robin and she’s already laughing at him, despite the fact that they’ve been speaking for literally five seconds. Steve laughs, too, and shakes his head even if Robin can’t see him. 

“It’s a big thing with my parents,” he explains, relaxing back against his pillows. “I gave you my phone number a million years ago and you’ve never called. Did someone die?” He teases, though the words make something long-buried in him twist uncomfortably.

“No, Steven, everyone is fine,” Robin replies, and Steve can hear the laughter in her voice as she speaks. “I just didn’t like you at all when you gave me your number and I thought you were hitting on me.”

“In your dreams,” Steve says, even though he kind of had been hitting on her when he’d scribbled his number on a scrap of receipt paper only about a week into their working together.

The more he gets to know Robin, the more he likes her, but it feels… different than it has with any of the girls he’s had a crush on in the past. He doesn’t necessarily know how to put it into words. Robin doesn’t seem into him like that, but he’s never sure if their bickering is just bickering or it’s her weird way of flirting with him. Mostly, he can’t remember ever having a girl who was just a friend before, so maybe he doesn’t really know the difference between a crush and just really wanting to be friends with someone he genuinely thinks is cool. Sometimes he watches her do small things like tuck her hair behind her ear or stick her tongue out just a little while she concentrates, though, and he can’t ignore the way his heart feels like it’s trying to escape the confines of his chest.

“In your dreams, Harrington,” Robin says, clearly still laughing at his expense.

“Yeah, whatever. Why are you calling?”

“Oh, sorry, was I interrupting the grand plans of King Steve’s Fascinating Thursday Night?”

Steve laughs even though he knows doing so is going to go straight to Robin’s gigantic ego, and shakes his head before saying, “No. No grand plans over here.” He wants to ask her not to call him that because the nickname is a harsh reminder that he used to be someone else completely, but he wants to keep the light, joking tone they have now, so he doesn’t.

“I didn’t think so. Running away from Jonathan Byers probably really took it out of you, huh?”

“Shit. You saw that?”

“Yeah, of course I saw it. You were across the mall and my eyesight is pretty good. I could see you blushing all the way from behind the counter,” Robin jibes as Steve groans pathetically.

“God, Robin, it was so bad. I thought if I could just be funny and normal, he’d be normal, too, but…”

“But you forgot who you were talking to?”

Steve laughs, but it’s still kind of self-pitying and sad. He knew Robin was going to give him a hard time about how badly the conversation with Jonathan went, but he’d at least hoped she’d hear his side of the story before starting in on him.

“Yeah, I guess I did. Did it really look bad even from far away?”

“Sorry to be the one to tell you, sailor, but yeah. Your awkwardness reached the entire mall through Jonathan’s amplifier. What did you even say to him?” she asks, sounding way too curious for Steve’s liking.

“I seriously was just trying to be normal and grab some dinner. Like, I never really got to say sorry to him because everything was so hectic when they found Will, but it’s been so long and I wasn’t gonna corner him at work. I didn’t wanna go up to him and start apologizing just because this is the first time I’ve actually talked to him in three years.”

“None of this is what you actually said,” Robin points out, making Steve roll his eyes and laugh in exasperation.

“I called him his last name, then thought, like, that’s such a douchebag move, so I tried to use his first name. It… came out like I didn’t know his first name, though, so he made fun of me. I took a shot at his ugly uniform, you know, because I had to, but that was definitely the wrong move,” Steve explains. Recounting this to Robin makes it feel about a million times worse than it had when it was actively happening. 

“Wow. Fake bullying a guy you used to really bully was a bad idea?” Robin says and Steve is so going to force her to do the trash run they usually fight over when they work together next.

“I was trying to be nice! It’s not my fault that he looks like he should be selling popcorn for Barnum and Bailey! It just got so awkward and I couldn’t shut up and he was so prickly. So I said something about how I know he doesn’t like me, but obviously I know his name because his kid brother talks about him all the time, then I paid and got out of there as fast as I could.”

Robin is quiet for a moment and Steve briefly worries the call disconnected, but the concern is eased when he hears her take a deep breath. He expected more teasing, but it sounds like she’s really considering what she’s going to say next.

“What are you doing right now?” She asks, and he doesn’t expect the question at all.

“Uh, nothing. Why?”

“Are your folks around?”

“Ha, no. Probably won’t be back until Monday at the earliest.”

“Cool. Sit tight,” she says before Steve is met with the harsh echoing of the dial tone.

Steve knows he isn’t very smart, but he thought he had a pretty good grasp on what was going on in that conversation right up until the very end. He can only assume Robin plans on showing up at his house, but he can’t imagine why his mortifying conversation with Jonathan would be the catalyst to her wanting to hang out outside of work for the first time ever. He settles in to wait and see what she’s planning and thinks that even if he doesn’t always understand Robin, he’s definitely never had a friend like her before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is just kind of a set up for the next chapter, which i'm really really excited to post!!


	4. The Confession

Thirty or so minutes pass before Steve hears a knock at the front door. He scrambles downstairs to open it and is immediately taken aback as Robin breezes past him into the house. She’s holding something Steve can’t see with her back to him like this and he has about a thousand questions right about now, but all he can think to do is close the front door behind her with a click of the lock.

“Hello to you, too. Make yourself comfortable. Wow, you already did!” He quips sarcastically. 

Robin spins to face him and it hits him that he’s never really seen her wear anything other than the stupid sailor uniform they wear to work. Her hair is pulled up on top of her head in a messy knot and it suits her in a way that makes Steve’s heart swell in his chest. He barely has time to take in anything else about her before she’s shoving a thermos into his hands and he’s trying to make sure he doesn’t spill its mystery contents all over his mother’s cream carpeting. 

“We close together tomorrow, so tonight,” she starts, and the mischievous look she’s throwing his way makes him pretty sure he’s just solved the mystery of the thermos’s contents, “we’re gonna get drunk together. You have no reason to say no, so don’t say no.”

Steve is kind of stunned as Robin heads towards the kitchen that sits just off the spacious living room, but he follows along behind her anyways. He’s not sure what it says about him that he’s so willing to follow her lead in any and every situation, but he’s too confused to dwell on it. She has a bottle of orange juice that she’s still holding between both hands and he’s just grateful she’s not planning on taking shots until they get blackout drunk. His party days are long behind him, but he refuses to let Robin drink him under the table today or any other day.

“I’ve literally asked you to come over after every single shift we’ve worked and you always say no,” Steve points out.

“Yeah, but that was when I thought you were still a douche,” Robin says breezily as she opens a cabinet that the glasses absolutely do not live in.

“Hey, don’t. Here,” Steve says, opening the cabinets his parents keep the glassware in and pulling down two glasses.

“I thought I was going to have to do a lot more convincing to get you to agree to this plan.”

Steve laughs and shakes his head a little as he watches Robin pour clear liquid from the thermos into the glasses. He’s a few feet away, but he can tell from the smell that it’s definitely vodka. Ever since he became the kids’ personal chauffeur and part time babysitter, Steve’s drinking habits had dwindled into practical nonexistence, but the brat pack was getting older and needed him a lot less than they had even just the year before. After his humiliation in the mall, he figures he owes it to himself to have a little fun and let loose for the first time in ages.

“Why? I was the keg stand king in high school for a reason,” Steve says, regretting the words the second they’re out of his mouth. “Gross. That’s… such a stupid thing to brag about.”

“You don’t have to tell me that,” Robin says as she adds orange juice into each glass. “But I was worried you might have to babysit your children.”

“Nah, they’re all, like, fifteen now, asshole. They’re fine without me for one night.”

Robin laughs as she hands over the drink she’s just finished mixing. She takes a gulp and Steve can already tell that this night is gonna end with her head in the toilet. He guesses it’s a good thing he spent so many weekends playing party mom that he’s more or less desensitised to people puking in front of him. He takes a slower sip and flinches at a taste that used to hardly faze him, coughing a bit at how strong Robin had made the drink.

“Holy shit, dude,” he says, already going for another sip despite his dramatic reaction.

“Oh, my god. You’re a lightweight now!” Robin exclaims, the glee clear in her voice as she leans against the kitchen counter.

“You make drinks like a sad housewife. How is that my fault? Come on. You’re gonna want to be sitting down in five minutes when you’re already wasted and the living room is spinning.”

Robin’s already taken a few solid mouthfuls and she’s starting to giggle like he’s never heard before. He can’t believe she’s spent the last month turning him down when he invited her over just to end up drinking in his kitchen on a whim, but he’s immensely glad she’s here. Steve still isn’t completely sure why she’s chosen now, but he’s got the rest of the night to ask once the alcohol has loosened his lips a little. He already knows there’s no way his curiosity isn’t going to win out, though.

They make their way to the overstuffed sofa that Steve’s father had insisted on buying, much to the dismay of his uptight mother. Steve was rarely grateful for his dad, but he is glad to not have to perch uncomfortably on some stiff, ugly couch his mother had chosen on appearance alone. On his way to the couch, he’d snagged the bottle of orange juice and the thermos, keeping the bottle tucked under his arm so he has room to carry his drink. Setting everything on the coffee table, Steve sinks into the space beside Robin before picking up the glass again. Now that he’s getting used to it, the vodka doesn’t seem so abrasive, which is probably dangerous in and of itself.

“Is now a good time to ask you what suddenly changed your mind about hanging out with me?” He asks after a moment or two of comfortable silence. 

Steve can see Robin shrug from the corner of his eye, taking a sip while she considers her words. If anything, he’d expected her to like him less after his confession earlier, but this is so much better and he’s not even sure he should be questioning it.

“I watched the way you talked to him and it was like… like King Steve never existed and you were just like me and everyone else we went to school with,” Robin says softly. “I guess I just figured maybe you being nice to me wasn’t some trick or… or a way for you to try and get in my pants.”

Steve laughs, but it’s soft and comes out sounding a little bit startled. He turns to look at her fully, but she’s gazing down into the cup in her hands. There had never been any part of him that considered Robin might see his attempts at friendship as the set-up to some elaborate prank, but he can’t really fault her for being nervous around him. He’s about halfway through his drink already and he knows he’s going to say something too honest before he even knows what it will be.

“Don’t tell Robin, but I think she’s pretty cool,” he says, the left side of his mouth pulled up in a smile.

Robin glances up, and she looks confused for only a moment before he can see understanding flicker across her face. She’s grinning back when she says, “Steve’s pretty alright, too.”

He’s laughing now, punctuating each chuckle with another mouthful of his drink. “We’re not even drunk enough for this yet,” he points out, raising a challenging eyebrow before taking down the second half of the screwdriver.

“I am not getting into a drinking competition with King Steve,” Robin says, though she finishes her drink off, too, grimacing a little bit when she sees the empty glass.

“Don’t call me that,” Steve says, and he hates the way desperation seems to hang on every word. 

He leans forward, mixing another drink to distract himself from the way that stupid nickname makes him feel like a piece of shit every time it’s uttered. Robin sets her empty glass beside his and he fills it up to the top before passing it back to her. She looks like she’s thinking hard about what she’s going to say next, but then again, she kind of always looks like that and Steve wonders what it’s like to not just blurt out the first thing that comes to mind.

“I didn’t know it bothered you,” Robin says, and she’s starting to slump against the couch already. She slips her shoes off and brings her legs up to tuck them against herself. The action makes her look so small and Steve suddenly feels the same urge to protect her that he feels when he looks at the kids.

“I mean, it’s not a huge deal,” he starts, but quickly shakes his head. “I don’t know. It’s like… this reminder that I used to be some shell of a person who screwed around and got wasted twice a week to try to impress my friends. ‘Friends,’ ha,” he corrects, putting air quotes around the words.

Robin lifts her glass to her lips the same moment he does and the movement makes him smile, breaking him out of his head just a little bit. Sometimes he feels like they share a brain and Robin’s got about three-quarters of it, but she feels just bad enough to let him have the last little piece. 

A drink and a half in and he’s already having stupid thoughts. Great. 

“I really don’t think you’re that guy anymore,” Robin says softly, startling Steve just a bit as her head comes to rest against his shoulder. He can’t remember a time where they’ve ever purposefully been this close to each other, but it’s making his heart beat a little bit harder. Playing it cool, Steve shifts so she’ll be more comfortable while simultaneously downing a good amount of his drink. Robin’s been quiet for a moment now, but he really doesn’t know how to respond to that, so he sits silently and waits to see if she’ll say more. 

“You were a real asshole,” Robin says, and Steve is proud of the way he doesn’t outwardly flinch at the words. “We only had class together once— Mrs. Click’s class sophomore year. Do you even remember me from that class?”

Steve heart isn’t racing anymore, but it still doesn’t feel quite right in his chest. He wants to say yes, of course he remembers her, but he doesn’t. In school, Robin had been just another band nerd to either torment or ignore based on whatever mood Tommy was in that day. As badly as he wants to say yes, he can’t lie to her, so he says nothing instead. Robin’s second drink is almost empty and she lets out this little, humorless laugh that makes Steve’s chest feel like it’s going to cave in before she continues.

“Of course you don’t. It was every Tuesday and Thursday. I sat behind you two days a week for a year and I… I know that you were always late and you always had the same breakfast. Bacon, egg, and cheese on a sesame bagel. You were Mr. Funny, Mr. Cool. I… wanted to hate you, but I couldn’t. I was obsessed with you. I wanted to pretend like I didn’t care, but… we all want to be popular. Accepted.”

Steve knows exactly what she means. If they’d had this conversation sophomore year, he might not have understood, but by now he’s messed up enough to know what it feels like to have everything just to lose it. He finishes his second drink and turns the glass slowly between his hands as he stares down at it. The buzz is starting to set in, but Steve still kind of wishes he was less sober for this.

“If it helps, none of that stuff is really all that great,” Steve says, even though he knows it doesn’t make a difference now. “It’s like… I don’t even know who that guy was, you know? Everything people told me mattered was all just… bullshit.”

Without his actively thinking about it, Steve’s mind drifts back to Tina’s halloween party and suddenly he’s in high school again, listening as Nancy Wheeler calls him bullshit. The wound has long since scabbed over, but sometimes he picks at it just to see if it will still bleed. He remembers the way his heart had broken as if it had happened yesterday, but that didn’t feel quite like this does. More than anything, he’s filled with regret for not having been Robin’s friend back then and he hates that anything he did ever made her feel bad about herself. This heartbreak feels more raw, maybe because he was still a dick when Nancy left him, but he feels like he’s genuinely a better person now. The old wound doesn’t bleed anymore, but it seems like a new one has opened up without his noticing. He wonders if Robin’s going to stick around long enough to see it heal.

“I think I just had to mess up in order to be better,” Steve says after a pause, deciding a third drink is definitely necessary. He sits up slowly to pour it so he doesn’t dislodge Robin too abruptly, but her head is still against the back of the couch above where his shoulder had been.

“It feels like my whole life has just been one big error,” Robin says before he settles back against the cushions. She immediately drops her head to his shoulder and it hits Steve that she must really trust him, because he’s never seen her let down her guard like this before.

“Yep,” Steve agrees with a nod and self-deprecating laugh, because he gets it. He’s been feeling the exact same way for at least the last three years, if not longer. He punctuates the sentence with a sip of his drink. He’d mixed it strong again, leaving very little vodka for Robin, but he figured that was probably for the best if her current sprawl was any indication of her lack of sobriety. 

“Have you ever felt like…” Robin starts before abruptly stopping herself. She sets her empty cup on the table and reaches for the thermos. Steve can see her seem to debate with herself briefly before she brings the thermos up to her lips and downs the rest of its contents.

“Hey, woah. Jesus Christ, Robs,” Steve says, the nickname slipping out without thought. 

She settles against him heavier this time and Steve’s arm instinctively goes around her shoulder in hopes of comforting her. He doesn’t know what she’s thinking, but he wants to make sure that whatever the end of her question is, she knows that he’s not going anywhere.

“Have you ever felt like something went wrong with you somewhere down the line?” Robin asks.

“How do you mean?”

“Like… like I don’t think I believe in God, but sometimes it’s nice to blame him for making me… wrong, or whatever.”

Steve doesn’t really understand the question, but he wants to, because whatever she’s talking about is clearly important to her and Steve doesn’t think anyone’s ever trusted him as much as Robin seems to right now. To encourage her, he says, “I think everyone feels like that sometimes.”

“No, it’s like…” Robin starts, sitting up and sliding away from him so that her back is up against the armrest and she’s facing him. “Having you ever had a crush on someone that makes no sense? Like, you like this person so much, but it feels like you’re not supposed to?”

Steve laughs a little and nods, turning so he’s facing Robin and their legs are leaned against each other. “Yeah,” He says, chugging the rest of the screwdriver before he continues so that he’ll have at least a little liquid courage. “Yeah, like, there’s this girl and she… she’s not like anyone I’ve ever known, you know? She’s smart and she’s so funny. I swear, I never stop laughing when I’m around her. And she’s someone I never would have noticed back in high school because… because Tommy and Carol would have given me shit for liking a band dweeb or something equally as stupid. It’s dumb, because I kind of wish I’d known her this whole time instead of waiting until after graduation to get my head out of my ass.”

His cards are all on the table now, but he’s not as scared as he thought he’d be. Robin’s being honest with him and it makes it easier to be honest in return, but she won’t look at him ever since he stopped talking. She looks upset and he thinks maybe he’s misread everything, so he makes a joke to try and ease the tension.

“Your eyes are way too open for you to have blacked out over there, lightweight,” he jokes, but Robin doesn’t laugh. 

Her eyes finally flick up to meet his and she looks like she might cry. Steve leans forward, not really sure what he intends to do, but before he has to figure it out, Robin starts to talk again.

“When I said I was obsessed with you… it wasn’t because I had a crush,” she starts. “It was because… I was trying to figure out why she wouldn’t stop staring at you.”

“Mrs. Click?” Steve asks, struggling to get his drunk brain to follow Robin’s train of thought. 

“Tammy Thompson,” Robin says after a long pause. “I would have given anything to have her look at me, but she couldn’t stop staring at you and your… your stupid hair. I just didn’t understand because you would get bagel crumbs all over the floor, and you asked such stupid questions, and you were a douchebag! And you didn’t even like her and I would go home and just scream into my pillow.”

“But… Tammy Thompson’s a girl,” Steve says before he’s taken even a moment to think about it. He still doesn’t understand what she’s talking about and his earlier wish to be drunk is suddenly replaced with a deep desire to be sober again. 

“Steve,” Robin says, barely able to look at him, and suddenly it all clicks into place.

His mouth drops open a little, a quiet, “oh,” slipping past his lips. Steve knows that whatever he says next will set the trajectory for the rest of his and Robin’s relationship and he’ll never be able to forgive himself if he screws it up. For once, he takes a long pause before he says anything, wanting to make sure that whatever he says is the right thing, even if he has no idea what the right thing really is in this situation. 

“I mean, yeah. Tammy Thompson, she’s cute and all, but she’s a total dud,” Steve says.

Robin straightens up quickly, shaking her head. “She is not,” she defends.

“Yes, she is. She wants to be a singer or whatever. She wants to move to Nashville or some shit.”

“She has dreams!”

“She can’t even hold a tune! She’s practically tone deaf, have you heard her? Yeah, all the time!” He says, and they’re both laughing now, so Steve really leans in, doing his best impersonation of Tammy’s horrible singing. He’s all but serenading Robin in Tammy’s pitchy, breathy voice, and she looks like she doesn’t want to be laughing, but she can’t help it. 

“She does not sound like that!” Robin interjects.

“She sounds exactly like that. That’s a great impression of her.”

“You sound like a muppet.”

“She sounds like a muppet! She sounds like a muppet giving birth!” Steve says, and they’re both giggling enough at this point that he knows he must’ve done the right thing somehow. He launches back into the impersonation, really getting into his rendition of Tammy doing Total Eclipse of the Heart and making Robin practically cackle as she tips into the back of the couch from the force of her laughter. She joins in briefly and it’s enough to make Steve lose it completely, ending the impression in favor of laughing along with Robin. 

When the giggles finally die down, Steve has to work to catch his breath as he smiles fondly over at Robin. Sure, the news sucks for his little crush, but he’s not too broken up about it. He may have lost out on a girlfriend, but he seems to have gained a best friend, and that feels kind of invaluable. Steve’s sure at this point that he’s never had a real best friend before, but he’s pretty excited to let Robin be his first.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> posting this earlier than i planned bc i hit 20k words for this fic in the doc and felt like that was worth celebrating! please forgive me for using lines directly from s3, but robin's coming out is kind of the only good part of the whole season, so i couldn't help myself


	5. The Closing Shift

When they finally get themselves together enough to stop laughing every few seconds, Steve looks at Robin and feels like he sees her for the first time. She looks like a weight has been lifted off her shoulders and he thinks it’s beautiful, seeing people be who they are. That’s why he likes the kids so much; they never apologize for being dorky little nerds and he loves them for it. He never got to be like that as a kid and they deserve it even more than he now knows he did.

“It’s not weird, right?” Robin asks after a moment of comfortable silence.

“What?” Steve asks, his eyes closed as he rests his head against the back of the couch.

“I just… you’re the first person I’ve ever told. I wanna make sure we’re good.”

Steve’s eyes open immediately, shocked by the weight of the words. He assumed Robin had told at least one other person before him and he kind of can’t fathom why she would trust him above anyone else with a secret that huge, but he’s determined to keep it. 

“Of course we’re good,” Steve promises, grinning at her and closing his eyes again. “You’re pretty much my only friend who isn’t an infant, so I don’t really wanna screw that up.”

“Steve?” Robin says, and her voice is so soft that he opens his eyes again despite the way the room is a little wobbly. “Thanks.”

“For what?” He asks, because he doesn’t understand what she needs to thank him for. He can give her hell for liking Tammy Thompson of all the girls they went to school with, but not for liking girls in general. His parents and the people on the news would probably have a thing or two to say about Robin right about now, but Steve isn’t his parents, and he doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with it. He really just wants her to be safe, because he’s seen the broadcasts and he knows there’s legitimate reason for concern, but it’s the eighties, for fuck’s sake. Robin liking girls shouldn’t be a big deal.

Steve knows that it is. He knows that it’s a big deal to Robin and he thinks she’s maybe the bravest person he knows, even though he knows a lot of pretty brave people.

“You were totally confessing having a crush on me.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Steve’s eyes are still closed, but he’s smiling and he can hear the smile in Robin’s voice, too. He likes when she teases him and makes him work for her friendship, because he knows it’s all bullshit. As invested in her as he already is, Steve thinks maybe Robin is just as invested in being his friend.

“Come on,” he says, struggling to his feet and wobbling just a bit once he’s upright. “I’m too drunk to be sitting up. I’m also never letting you make drinks again,” he teases as he heads for the stairs.

“You made the second two, dingus. It’s not my fault if you followed my lead,” Robin shoots back, though she follows after him without question.

The stairs feel like a feat and Steve remembers a time when he climbed them at least once a week while he was way more drunk than he is right now. He gently pushes Robin in front of him, figuring that if she loses her balance at any point, he’ll be there to make sure she doesn’t fall to her death. That, or she’ll knock him down with her and they’ll both die at the foot of the stairs.

“You first so I can catch you,” Steve drunkenly instructs, and Robin nods seriously as she takes the steps slowly. 

They both take their sweet time, hanging on tightly to the handrail, but they make it up the stairs to his room without incident. Steve immediately falls into bed on his back, but he watches as Robin looks around his room. She looks confused and a little upset, but Steve can’t fathom why.

“You live here?” She asks.

The question is so ridiculous that it makes him laugh as he nods and says, “uh huh. Yep, all my life.”

“It looks like a hotel room with a really fancy stereo. Why don’t you have stuff on the walls or… or the floor?”

“The floor?”

“Yeah! Yeah, like your uniform or pairs of shoes or… I don’t know. Stuff.”

“My mom likes me to keep it clean and nice,” Steve says, feeling embarrassed. “I haven’t really had anyone in here. The kids hang out downstairs if they ever come over and when I was in school, I just went to my friends’ houses instead of having them here. My parents just like things a certain way.”

Robin comes to lay next to him on the bed, her elbows jostling his as she props her hands behind her head in a pose that mirrors his own. He can see her looking at him from the corner of his eyes, so he closes them again in case she’s about to laugh at him.

“That’s sad,” she says, and Steve furrows his eyebrows at the pity. 

“Why?”

“Because you’re all… huge personality and this room looks like it belongs to someone who exclusively eats saltines.”

Steve laughs and rolls onto his side to look at her. The movement makes his stomach lurch, but the wave of nausea passes as quickly as it comes. He never really thought about his room being sad, but he never thought about a lot of stuff Robin makes him think about. Before he can respond, Robin cuts him off.

“Aren’t you gonna be embarrassed when you invite Jonathan over and he finds out you live in a hotel room that got lost?”

Steve is laughing as he says, “There is no way I would ever invite Jonathan here and there’s even less of a chance he would ever say yes if I did.”

“You wanna be his friend though,” Robin says, and Steve thinks she might be asking him at first, but it feels more like she’s telling him.

“I mean… I mean, yeah, kinda, but he hates me and he’s still dating my ex girlfriend, so I don’t think that’s ever going to happen.”

“He’s not dating Nancy,” Robin says, and Steve thinks her tone is way too casual for the massive news she’s just shared with him. “Lisa, you know the one who works at Claire’s?” Steve doesn’t, but that doesn’t seem to matter to Robin as she rambles on. “She told me that that’s why Jonathan is working at the mall now. He and Nancy got fired from the newspaper because Nancy tried to follow some lead that didn’t pan out and their boss found out about it. I guess they had some huge fight and broke up.”

Steve is shocked to say the least. He and Nancy had never been the perfect pair, but he thought maybe Jonathan was better suited to her. The last time he’d seen them in town together, though, they looked a lot like his parents always did: angry and bitter. Maybe that had been right around the time everything happened.

In an attempt to still sound casual, Steve says, “How does Lisa know all that?”

“Dude, she knows everything going on with everyone in that mall. It’s freaky,” Robin replies. “Wait, that’s like the least important part of what I said. You can swing in and be friends with Jonathan now!”

Thinking it over, Steve supposes she’s right. They’ve got stuff in common that Robin has no idea about, and now they have this, too. Steve remembers what it feels like to get your heart kicked in the ass by Nancy Wheeler and he feels for Jonathan, he really does. Even if the guy hates him, he wouldn’t wish that kind of pain on his worst enemy. 

The real issue is approaching him. Every time Steve has seen Jonathan in the last three years has either been a life or death situation, or a situation where Steve would prefer death after sticking his foot in his mouth. He doesn’t know what it is about Jonathan Byers that turns him into a fumbling, awkward kid, but he really isn’t a fan. Even the thought of trying again after the catastrophe that was today’s conversation kind of makes Steve want to bury his head in the sand and never come out.

“Why are you so invested in this?” Steve asks.

“It’s kind of a big burden being your only friend,” Robin says with a giggle. “Besides, you look at him all… funny.”

“Funny?”

“Like, like… I don’t know! I’m drunk. You look at him like a little kid looks at a puppy they really, really wanna take home. You look at him like that.”

Robin is rambling and giggling every couple of words, and Steve would probably be laughing, too, if her words didn’t hit him right in the chest. He thinks he knows what she means, because he figures he looks at Jonathan with some sort of desperation clear on his face, but he hopes Jonathan has never noticed it. 

“Whatever,” Steve says with a dismissive laugh. “After today, I think he would prefer that I don’t talk to him ever again.” 

“You’re still gonna try again tomorrow,” Robin taunts lightly.

Steve wishes she wasn’t right. 

\---

He really, really does not want to be here, he thinks as he enters the mall for his and Robin’s closing shift. He’d woken up hours earlier on the floor, Robin snoring softly from above him in his bed. Steve doesn’t really remember how he ended up there, but he only had a slight headache to show for their night of drinking, so he figured things could be worse. Robin hadn’t been so lucky, racing for the bathroom mere seconds after he’d woken her up, so yeah, he was pretty grateful to just have a headache.

Even though Steve just saw Robin this morning when he’d dropped her off back at home, he kind of already misses her and, as much as he hates closing, he’s glad they at least get to do it together. As he makes his way towards the ice cream parlor, Steve pointedly does not look anywhere but right in front of him. He has no idea if Jonathan is working, or how they run their schedules at Hot Dog on a Stick, or even if he wants to see Jonathan. 

When he finally lays eyes on Robin, Steve’s face splits into a pitying grin. She looks like hell, half slumped over the counter behind the cash register with her eyes closed against the bright fluorescents that are assaulting even on a good day. 

“I don’t think you’ve ever looked more beautiful,” Steve teases, disappearing into the back to discard his backpack and clock in before she can reply.

“Eat me, Harrington,” Robin says as soon as he comes back out, which makes him laugh more than it probably should.

Before he can say anything in response, a customer enters the shop, drawing both Steve and Robin’s attention up as they plaster on fake smiles. Steve’s grin slips immediately, because it’s not just a customer. It’s Jonathan, wearing his ugly work clothes and holding the giant hat in his hands, with the most determined look on his face Steve thinks he’s ever seen. 

“Hey,” he greets, trying to sound casual, but Jonathan cuts him off before he can get anything else out. 

“It got really hard to keep hating you after I saw you in that stupid sailor suit,” Jonathan says indignantly, and Steve isn’t sure what he expected to hear, but it sure wasn’t that.

“Well, I could only hope to look half as good as you do over there,” Steve replies, gesturing vaguely across the mall. He’s practically able to hear the pop in Robin’s neck as she swings her head around to look at him, and he’s not really sure why he said it, but the words make Jonathan flush and shuffle his feet a little, so he can’t quite find it in him to regret it. 

“Whatever,” Jonathan replies, already turning to leave. “I’m gonna be late for my shift. Just… I don’t hate you,” he finishes before hurrying back across the courtyard. 

Steve watches him disappear through the door marked “Employees Only,” just blinking in the wake of another bizarre conversation.

“Hey, dingus? What the fuck was that?” Robin asks, breaking him out of his momentary reverie. 

More than anything, Steve wishes he had a good answer to Robin’s question, but he honestly has no idea himself. He knew Jonathan was just trying to make it clear that he’d gotten over the past, but it had come out… almost teasing enough to be flirty, and Steve had simply reacted in kind. 

“I… really don’t know,” he finally says, settling on the truth. 

Customers mill in, saving him from having to elaborate and keeping him distracted from the sight of Jonathan working parallel to them. They work through the evening rush, serving more people than a normal close because it’s Friday night and the mall is crawling with patrons. By the time the store clears out, it’s nearly closing time and Steve is shocked by how quickly his shift flew by. Even Robin looks like she has a little more pep in her step by the end of the night, and he’s proud of her for soldiering through the hangover.

Robin is sweeping the lobby as he counts the register because he’s learned that she’s useless at math and he’s always been pretty good at it, despite his lack of aptitude in school. The store is empty in reflection of the rest of the mall and he knows Robin is about to corner him. Sometimes he feels like they can read each other’s minds, which makes him think of Mike and Will, and the way they seem to be able to communicate wordlessly more often than not. He’s always been jealous of people with that kind of bond, and he feels lucky to finally have it with Robin.

“You have to go talk to him when we’re off,” she says, not even looking up from the task at hand.

“I definitely _don’t_ have to do that,” Steve replies, pausing his counting to talk so he doesn’t lose his place. “What would I even say to him?”

“I don’t know. How about, ‘hey, I got my heart kicked in the ass by Nancy, too. Wanna smoke a joint and feel sorry for ourselves?’”

Steve just stares at her, setting the money down to think over her suggestion. It’s not a terrible one, and he guesses it means that she isn’t going to rat him out for smoking up every once in a while. Just from what little he knows about the Byers’ family (Joyce, in particular), Steve figures Jonathan isn’t likely to turn down free pot, and that knowledge gives him just enough unearned confidence to think Robin might be onto something. 

“You know, maybe you’re right when you call yourself a genius,” Steve says, shaking his head when Robin beams up at him. “Don’t let it go to your head. If it gets any bigger, you’re totally never gonna have a shot with Tammy, even if I talk you up to her.”

Robin looks scandalized as she flips him off, but she’s laughing even as she shushes him. Steve laughs in tandem before going back to counting the drawer. He finishes before she’s done sweeping and finally dares to look up and over at Hot Dog on a Stick. Jonathan is wiping down some machine while his coworker counts their drawer, and Steve bites his lip in contemplation as he watches them.

“How much do you love me?” He asks Robin after a short pause.

“I don’t,” she shoots back, leaning against the broom. “Yeah, I’ll finish up while you go talk to him.”

“Wonder twin powers, activate!” Steve says, grinning as he heads to change and clock out. When he pushes through the swinging door, Robin is gathering up the dishes that have to be done before they can leave and he’s definitely going to owe her, but at least he knows she doesn’t completely despise doing their end of day dish. 

“I can be repaid in one of those joints you definitely don’t keep in the pack of smokes in your car,” Robin says, smirking mischievously. 

“And to think, just yesterday I was worried you were a narc,” Steve teases as he heads for the door, catching the glare Robin shoots him before she makes it through the door to the back. “I promise! I’ve got one with your name all over it!” He shouts, laughing softly as he shakes his head again.

Now that he actually has to put this plan into action, Steve’s palms are a little sweaty and he can’t stop raking his hand back through his hair. Jonathan actually sees him coming this time, which makes him a lot less worried that they’re headed for a repeat performance of yesterday’s mess of a conversation. He lifts his hand in a wave just as Jonathan meets his eyes, and approaches the counter so that he can lean heavily against it while they talk. 

“I just wiped that down,” Jonathan says in lieu of an actual greeting. 

“Shit, sorry,” Steve says, straightening up immediately before he can do any more damage to Jonathan’s recently cleaned counters. Jonathan laughs lightly at him and Steve gives an anxious grin in response.

“I can’t believe you think I actually care about the counters,” he says as he finishes wiping down the glass that protects the food from the open air of the mall.

“I can’t believe you’re the asshole now,” Steve replies, aiming for playfulness and missing it by miles as he watches Jonathan’s grin fade. “No, I… shit. I’m sorry?” He offers pathetically.

“No, it’s cool. Did you want something? We’re closed,” Jonathan says, as if Steve, an employee of this very mall himself, wouldn’t already know that. 

Jonathan’s guard is clearly up, but it’s not like yesterday, so Steve doesn’t feel completely deterred by the minute fumble. Steve watches as Jonathan’s coworker, who he’d hardly noticed until she moved, carries the cash bag into the back, leaving them alone in the mall that’s empty save for employees closing up now. 

“Look, I know we’re not friends, but… well, I heard about you and Nancy.”

Steve can all but see the shutters come down once he gets the sentence out, Jonathan looking down and sighing heavily. When he looks back up, his face is schooled into indifference, but Steve can tell he’s working pretty hard for it.

“No, I don’t care if you want to swing in again,” Jonathan says, not looking Steve in the eyes.

For the second time today, Jonathan has thrown him for a loop and Steve has to recover from this instance even quicker than the last. “What? Dude, _no_ ,” he says emphatically. “I don’t wanna ask Nancy out.”

The relief is clear on Jonathan’s face as he raises an eyebrow and says, “No?”

“No, no. I was wondering if you… maybe wanted to hang out?” For once, Steve thinks he’s the one throwing Jonathan off his rhythm, and he smiles in sympathy. “And before you ask, no, I’m not pranking you. Promise. Will would kick my ass.”

The weak joke makes Jonathan smile, ducking his head again, but not how he had when Steve mentioned Nancy, and Steve thinks that maybe he’s actually getting somewhere. There’s a long pause as Jonathan seems to consider, and it makes Steve antsy as all hell.

“Yeah. Yeah, okay. You can drop by my house and pick me up at…” Jonathan pauses to glance at the red and white clock hanging above them. “Ten?”

“Sure, yeah. It’s the weekend, so you know what that means.”

Jonathan raises an eyebrow and shakes his head, saying, “I really don’t know what that means,” in an exasperated tone.

“Oh, I forgot you’re not cool. It means no bedtime,” he jokes, turning the charm on even as he teases and dropping a wink to punctuate his sentence. “I’ll see ya, Byers,” Steve says as he takes a few steps backward and turns towards the double doors, a smile on his face and his palms sweaty for a whole new reason.


	6. The Lake

Steve has thirty minutes to kill before he’s due at the Byers’ residence and he spends most of it racing home to clear the trash out of his backseat. He normally just tells the kids to ignore it or bother someone else for rides, but he finds that he doesn’t want Jonathan to think he’s a total slob. When he glances at the clock on the dashboard, he realizes it’s ten till and he’s cutting it awfully close if he wants to be on time, so he throws his backpack into the trunk alongside the bat full of nails he keeps carefully hidden under some blankets, and slides into the driver’s seat. 

He turns the radio up and taps the steering wheel along to the song playing. It’s one he likes, Take on Me, and he thinks Jonathan would make fun of him for being so stereotypical when it comes to his music taste. Jonathan probably listens to bands no one’s even heard of yet. Steve rolls his eyes with a short puff of a laugh, pressing down on the gas a little harder so that he won’t be late picking Jonathan up. He doesn’t know why he’s so nervous, but it probably has a thing or two to do with how incredibly out of his depths he feels right now. Robin’s the only friend he’s attempted to make since graduating and it took him weeks to get her to even tolerate him.

Jonathan already trusts Steve with Will, which he counts as a victory, but he has no idea how they’re going to manage as friends. Hell, he doesn’t even know _if_ they’re going to manage as friends. The thought makes his nerves feel more like full-blown panic, so he shoves the thought away as he pulls into the Byers’ gravel driveway a little too fast. Jonathan’s beat up old car is already parked and Steve is grateful he didn’t beat the other boy here, because he has no idea how he’d explain to Joyce and Will that, _yes, it’s definitely too late for a party meeting, but I’m actually here for Jonathan?_ without Jonathan there to back him up.

When Steve finally manages to shove his heart out of his throat and back to the place it belongs, it’s exactly ten, and he jogs up to the door to knock. He rocks back and forth on the balls of his feet, hoping Joyce hasn’t turned in early just to be woken by him pounding on the door like a neanderthal, but before he can worry too much, Jonathan is slipping out the door with a goodbye hollered over his shoulder into the yellow light of the old house. 

Steve stumbles back a step to keep from being knocked over by Jonathan, who seems a little breathless with his hair sticking up every which way as if he’d just pulled a shirt on seconds before racing to the door. The sight makes Steve grin as Jonathan looks up at him.

“Are you really that embarrassed of me?” Steve asks playfully, still crowding Jonathan’s space ever so slightly.

“Yes,” Jonathan replies as he edges his way out from between Steve and the door and heads out towards Steve’s BMW.

“Ouch,” Steve says, following Jonathan before splitting off towards the driver’s side. “And I was gonna offer you my weed and everything,” he says over the roof of his car.

Jonathan sinks into the passenger seat and pulls the door shut heavily, shushing Steve emphatically. His gaze is ever so slightly panicked as he looks over and says, “Are you crazy? Be quiet about that.” 

Steve shoots him a lopsided grin as he starts up the engine and backs out of the driveway to the street. He doesn’t really have a plan, but Jonathan has never seemed like the kind of guy who needed constant excitement to keep him happy, so Steve just drives wherever he feels like. 

“Your mom has more weed in your house right now than I’ve smoked in my whole entire life, Byers, promise. You’re fine. If you don’t wanna smoke, we won’t smoke,” Steve says with a casual shrug of a shoulder.

“I didn’t say I didn’t want to,” Jonathan says quickly, making Steve grin and shake his head fondly.

“That’s what I figured,” Steve replies, rolling his window down to let the warm summer air into the car’s cabin. He can tell that Jonathan is far from relaxed, sitting stiffly in the seat beside him and staring resolutely down at his hands where they’re folded over each other in his lap. “Take a breath, man. I’m not gonna bite,” he reassures.

Jonathan laughs quietly and shakes his head, lifting his hands to rub harshly at his eyes. “I know, I know. Just… this is weird, right? It has to be weird for you.”

“It’s only weird if you make it weird,” Steve says, having to control the urge to reach over and squeeze Jonathan’s leg reassuringly like he might if it was Robin or any of the kids.

“Weird is pretty much my middle name,” Jonathan says, turning to look out the window at the trees flying by them.

“Interesting choice on Joyce’s part,” Steve quips, deciding he knows exactly where he wants to go with Jonathan and heading towards the outskirts of town. A startled, nearly choked laugh comes from Jonathan and Steve revels in the small victory. “What’s your actual middle name?” He asks, just because he doesn’t really know what else to say and he knows from experience that Jonathan often has to be prodded into continuing conversations. 

“Why do you wanna know?”

“Hey, this isn’t an interrogation,” Steve promises. “I just wondered. I figure your name’s not actually Jonathan Weird Byers.”

“You probably thought it was back in high school,” Jonathan quips.

It stings, but Steve doesn’t let it get to him, and he knows the vitriol is something he’s earned by being such a dick to Jonathan once upon a time. “Yeah, that was well-deserved,” he mumbles, raising his voice back to its regular volume to say, “I was an idiot back in high school, so,” he trails off.

“Lewis,” Jonathan says after a long pause, still looking out the window and away from Steve. “My mom _really_ thought I was gonna be Joanna Louise. It’s nice to start off life as a disappointment. Sets the bar nice and low.”

Steve laughs, surprised by how funny Jonathan is seemingly without even trying. “Mine’s Andrew,” he says as they slow to a stop across from Hawkins Lake. Steve comes out here a lot when his parents are home, just to escape their constant fighting, and he likes the way the moon reflects over the water. “Come on. It’ll get too hot to stay in the car,” he explains, reaching for the pack of cigarettes he definitely doesn’t keep in the glovebox so his parents don’t find the few rolled joints he keeps amongst the smokes. 

Sliding onto the warm metal hood easily, Steve pats the space next to him as he digs around in his pants pocket for a lighter. He pulls it free right as Jonathan settles beside him and Steve wastes no time grabbing out a joint and lighting up the end. Closing his eyes, Steve takes a few short inhales to make sure the joint lights evenly before he passes it over to Jonathan, who takes it gently and inhales with practiced ease.

“Robin knew you’d agree if I offered you pot,” Steve teases as the joint is handed back to him. Jonathan is careful to keep his fingers from brushing against Steve’s as they pass the weed back and forth between them.

“You had to ask Robin for pointers?” Jonathan returns, and it makes Steve smile even as he rolls his eyes.

“I mean, yeah. It’s not really a secret that you’re not the president of the Steve Harrington Official Fan Club.”

Jonathan laughs, reaching for the joint as he says, “Yeah, the best I could do was treasurer.”

Steve laughs and knocks his shoulder against Jonathan’s, kind of shocked by how easy this all is. He feels like he’s been missing out on being Jonathan’s friend his whole life and he really wants to make up for lost time. Jonathan sighing breaks Steve out of his thoughts as he’s handed the joint, bringing it to his lips and taking a long drag.

“See? It’s not that weird,” Steve points out.

“Only because we haven’t gotten to the part where you ask me about Nancy,” Jonathan replies.

“I wasn’t gonna ask.”

“Yes, you were.”

“Okay, maybe, but not until we were both way higher than we are right now,” he confesses as he hands Jonathan the joint again. It’s disappearing fast, but it was rolled thin enough that Steve isn’t too worried that he’ll be too high to drive them home in a little bit. 

Jonathan lets out a miserable sounding laugh and takes a few deep hits. Steve watches as the smoke drifts away into the night sky and thinks it looks pretty against the darkness like this. Oh, he’s definitely high already, but it doesn’t stop him from taking the next offered hit. 

“It’s so stupid, man,” Jonathan says, and Steve fakes patience as he waits for Jonathan to continue. “We were working over at the paper and Nance was so sure she had the perfect lead for this story on abuse in the old folks home on Maple Glen. We were fucking interns. We weren’t supposed to be researching anything, really, but you know Nancy,” Jonathan says before taking another hit and trying to pass Steve the end of the joint.

“Nah, knock yourself out,” Steve offers. “I still gotta be able to drive us home without dying.” 

He keeps his tone casual, but he does know Nancy, and he thinks he knows Jonathan, too. The other boy is definitely going to need the rest of the weed if he’s going to keep talking about his and Nancy’s breakup. Immediately, he can tell that Jonathan is debating if it’s polite to hog the rest of a joint that was technically Steve’s, but he seems to get over it quickly.

“Thanks,” he says, his voice coming out so gently that Steve can’t help but turn to look at him for the first time since they exited the car. Jonathan looks tired, but like he’s itching to keep talking, so Steve waits out his shyness again. “I barely told my mom what happened. I really only did to explain why I was looking for a new job, because I knew she was gonna make it some huge deal and it… just doesn’t feel like it is.”

“Really?” Steve says before he can stop himself, hoping he won’t spook Jonathan into clamming up.

“Yeah,” Jonathan says as he finishes off the joint and stubs the end out on the underside of his shoe before flicking it off into the grass beneath them. “I really didn’t think I’d have to talk about this with you,” he says, picking at the fraying end of his jeans to avoid Steve’s eyes.

“You don’t have to, man. I’m fucking stoned. We can talk about, like, aliens or some shit if you wanna,” he offers, unconsciously smiling as he watches Jonathan do the same. “You seem like the kinda guy who’s into weird alien shit.”

Jonathan laughs, his head tipping back, and Steve thinks he looks unnaturally pretty with the moonlight grazing his cheekbones and reflecting off his eyes. The thought startles him a little, but he brushes it off as nothing more than a result of getting just a tiny bit too high too fast. Steve has to make himself stop staring, redirecting his gaze out to the water a few hundred feet away from where he’d parked. 

“I mean, I’ve seen you cry over her, so I think I kinda owe it to you,” Jonathan says casually, but the words make Steve blanch. 

“The halloween party,” he mumbles, very pointedly not looking at Jonathan now.

“Yeah. Listen, it’s fine, right? Shared… misery, or whatever.”

“Sure, yeah,” Steve says, but his voice sounds funny even to his own ears. “It’s fine.” What he doesn’t say is that Jonathan had been the only person to even try to offer Steve any comfort in the wake of his breakup with Nancy, and he kind of feels like maybe he should thank him for it, but he can’t force the words out.

“When we broke up, I kind of couldn’t think about anything but you,” Jonathan says, the words pulling Steve’s gaze back to where the other boy is leaning comfortably against the windshield.

“What?” Steve asks, sitting up a little.

“I don’t know. It’s like… I thought I should care as much as you did. But I guess it’s different when you’re the one calling it off.”

Jonathan still won’t look at him, and Steve’s mind is stuck on one particular part of what Jonathan just said. “You broke up with her?” He asks, wishing he was better at keeping the surprise out of his voice. Steve thinks he’d do better if he wasn’t so stoned, but then again, if he was sober, they’d probably never have this conversation in the first place. 

“Yeah. Crazy, right?” Jonathan replies. “I just couldn’t do it. Nancy is… she’s a great person, but I don’t really think she’s my person. I always felt, like, less than. Does that even make sense? Shit, you shouldn’t have let me have the rest of the joint, man.”

Steve smiles a bit, leaning back against the glass of the front window again and letting his head loll to the side towards Jonathan. “No, I get it. I’m, like, so stupid compared to her. Couldn’t keep up.”

“Not stupid,” Jonathan mumbles, his eyes drifting closed as he breathes out heavily. “Sometimes it just doesn’t work. I’m not as heartbroken as I think I should be.”

Steve commends Jonathan, he really does. He doesn’t know how long ago he called it off, but Steve feels like he was a mess for ages after Nancy left him. His emotional crisis just kind of got pushed to the back of his brain in favor of trying to protect a bunch of kids from a monster that wanted them all dead with nothing but a lighter and a baseball bat full of nails. 

“I still have your bat,” Steve says, not really sure what prompted the words to leave the safehaven of his lips. 

“It’s Nancy’s bat,” Jonathan corrects, but Steve can feel his eyes on him now. “Why?”

Steve shrugs, saying, “I dunno. I used to keep it next to my bed, like, just in case.” He can see Jonathan nodding from the corner of his eye, but he doesn’t seem to have anything to add, so Steve keeps talking. “It was sort of the only thing that made me feel safe?” He offers, never having told anyone what he was now telling Jonathan. “That makes me sound like a little kid.”

“No, I get it,” Jonathan reassures and Steve belatedly realizes that Jonathan had bumped his hand against Steve’s where it rests on the hood of his car. “Thanks, by the way,” he says after a pause.

“Thanks?” Steve parrots.

“Yeah. It’s a thing people say when guys that used to bully them save their lives from an interdimensional monster.”

Steve laughs and shoves Jonathan lightly with his shoulder again. “Had to make it up to you somehow, right?”

“Isn’t that what the camera was for?” 

Steve blinks dimly at Jonathan, thinking he must have misheard him. “What?” He asks, looking back over at Jonathan who’s still staring up at the stars above them.

“Come on, Steve. No way did Nancy have the money for that thing,” Jonathan reasons. “Plus, she’s shit at secrets.”

Steve smiles just a bit and shakes his head before turning the action into a nod. “I know she is, but you really weren’t supposed to know.”

“Why not?”

Steve expects the question, but preparedness doesn’t change the fact that he doesn’t really know what to say in response, so he just shrugs. The weed is making him feel fuzzy and his thoughts roll across the surface of his mind like the crawling intro of those nerdy space movies Dustin and the other boys are so into. When he finally strings them into a sentence that makes actual sense, Steve starts to ramble.

“Because… because I was a huge dick to you and I didn’t want you to feel like I was trying to buy my way into having you forgive me, I guess. I just wanted to fix what I’d broken,” he says, meaning it figuratively and literally. “I never really got to say I was sorry, but it felt like it didn’t matter once we got Will back and everything settled down. You had way bigger problems than some sixteen year old prick, but, uh, I am. Sorry, that is.”

“I know,” Jonathan says, his voice coming out so soft that Steve can’t help but look at him. He meets Jonathan’s eyes and finds something he can’t quite name lurking beneath the surface of them. “But you changed, right? Got better? That’s pretty much the best apology anyone could give. And hey, if I hadn’t forgiven you, I’d feel pretty gross about smoking your weed.”

The comment makes Steve laugh and duck his head to run his hand through his hair as he grins. Any lingering tension between them feels like it’s disappeared and Steve is way too high to be talking about feelings for the second night in a row, so he thinks for a moment before saying, “wouldn’t it be fucked up if you looked at Dustin’s cat and it barked?”

Jonathan laughs so loud that it sets Steve off, too, and they both end up nearly sliding off the hood as they clutch their stomachs to fight the pain of contracting muscles. When they can breathe properly again, Jonathan turns to him with a smile still on his face and shakes his head.

“What the hell, Steve?” He says, and the question gets Steve going all over again.

“Wouldn’t it? Like, we’ve seen some messed up stuff, but I still think it would throw me to hear a cat start barking,” Steve says, the sentence partially lost to rampant giggles. “Okay, okay. New topic. Uh, okay! Worst artist on the radio, go. I know you have stupid, pretentious opinions, so don’t hold back, okay?”

Without even a second of hesitation, Jonathan says, “Madonna,” and Steve feels like his eyes are going to pop out of his skull.

“What?! Do you hate _fun_?” He asks, scandalized. His tone makes Jonathan laugh, but he needs an answer to his perfectly logical question.

“Her music is so bad, Steve. Are you messing with me right now?”

“No!” Steve says indignantly, making Jonathan laugh even harder.

“Sorry, I’m sorry. I'm just picturing former cock of the walk Steve Harrington dancing to Madonna in his bedroom while he sings into a hairbrush,” Jonathan says, dissolving into helpless giggles.

“Nice play, Shakespeare,” Steve says, using his open palm to shove at Jonathan this time. “Just for that, I’m gonna buy a Madonna tape and we’re gonna listen to it next time we hang out.”

“There’s gonna be a next time?” Jonathan asks, the humor suddenly gone from his voice.

Steve blinks for a moment before he nods rapidly. “I mean, yeah. Nance was pretty much your only friend, so I figure you’re desperate for new ones now,” Steve teases.

Jonathan chuckles as he shakes his head and closes his eyes. “You’re such an asshole, Harrington,” he says, but Steve can tell Jonathan doesn’t mean it. 

“I’m an asshole with a weed hookup, though, so you’ll be back.”

Steve doesn’t think he can remember ever hearing Jonathan laugh as openly or as often as he has tonight, and it makes Steve wonder if his joke about Jonathan being desperate for new friends was closer to fact than fiction. Honestly, he’s still kind of surprised by how much fun it’s been to hang out with Jonathan like this and he’s glad his high is hanging around long enough for him to make excuses about not being able to drive home just yet.

Silence falls over them for a while, but it doesn’t feel tense or suffocating, and Steve is briefly worried that Jonathan has fallen asleep next to him on the hood of the car. He turns his head to find Jonathan staring straight up at the sky, definitely not asleep, and the thought that struck him earlier is back with a vengeance. Jonathan looks relaxed and soft despite the way the weak light of the moon makes his features look sharp and defined. Steve feels like he did last night after Robin came out to him: caught in quiet awe of the person he’s looking at.

It doesn’t feel the same as it did with Robin, but Steve is still too high to think about it any more, so he lets his mind drift onto what he would ask Jonathan to do next time they hung out. Maybe he’s just as desperate as Jonathan is to make a new friend, but he thinks that might be something that works out in their favor. 

Jonathan finally seems to notice that he’s being stared at and starts to turn his head, but Steve looks away before Jonathan can catch him in the act. He looks up at the sky now, just breathing the slowly cooling air and feeling it circulate through his lungs. Reaching into his pocket, Steve pulls out his pack of cigarettes and tips one out into his hand before tilting the pack towards Jonathan in silent offering.

“No, thanks,” Jonathan says, his eyes fixed on Steve’s hand where it’s extended towards him. “Not really my thing.”

Steve nods and slides the pack back into his pocket, pulling the lighter out again when he withdraws his hand. He lights up the cigarette and inhales deeply, letting the smoke fill his lungs before he releases it into the night air. 

“You wanna sit in the car and listen to music?” He asks around his second inhale.

“As long as you promise it’ll be something other than Madonna,” Jonathan says, already sliding sideways off the hood. 

“I don’t control the radio, Byers,” Steve says, following him down and taking a moment to enjoy the way the ground feels beneath his feet. He definitely needs a little more time for the high to wear off before they’re going anywhere.

“Yeah, because I do,” Jonathan challenges as he all but falls into the passenger seat.

Steve chuckles and follows his lead, dropping into the seat like he’s been standing his entire life. It takes him a moment to fumble for his keys in his pocket, but when he gets them, he starts the car up, leaving the engine off and letting the radio run off the battery. Before he can make any moves to control what they listen to, Jonathan is fiddling with the dial, skipping through stations until he finds something he likes. Steve doesn’t recognize the song and it’s totally different from the kind of thing he would listen to if he was out here alone, but he’s happy to leave it if it makes Jonathan happy. 

The boy in question is bobbing his head along to the song and Steve knows he’s being weird, what with the way he can’t seem to stop looking at Jonathan, but it’s hard to stop himself. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen Jonathan look so in his element and Steve thinks it’s nice, the way Jonathan has been able to relax so easily around him despite their messy past. To shake himself loose from his thoughts, Steve takes another drag from his cigarette and lets the smoke billow slowly out the open window.

“It’s The Cure,” Jonathan says, tapping his fingers against his thighs.

“The cure to what?” Steve asks, making Jonathan giggle for reasons he doesn’t quite understand.

“No, the band is called The Cure,” Jonathan clarifies and Steve nods along.

“This doesn’t suck,” he concedes, grinning as he continues. “It’s just not Madonna.”

“Would you shut up about Madonna? What is your deal with her, anyways? Robin’s gonna be jealous if you wanna bang her.”

Steve laughs until his brain fully catches up with what Jonathan has just said. He shoots Jonathan a puzzled look, taking a drag before he says anything. “Why would Robin care?” He asks.

“Because she’s your girlfriend?” Jonathan replies, sounding confused. “You had way less of that joint than I did.”

“Clearly you had too much,” Steve says in response, shaking his head with a quiet laugh. “Robin is definitely not my girlfriend.”

“She’s not?” Jonathan asks, looking at him intently, like he thinks Steve is just trying to play some sort of trick on him with the confession.

“Nope. Just best friends,” he says, finishing off his cigarette and sending the filter flying out the window with a practiced flick of his fingers.

“Huh,” Jonathan says, his tone sounding skeptical and considering.

“What?”

“Nothing. Just figured you’d wanna date her. She seems cool.”

“She’s not,” Steve promises with a smile and a lighthearted shrug.

“You’re probably just too busy fantasizing about Madonna,” Jonathan teases, making Steve laugh again even as he flips Jonathan off. 

The radio has switched to a different song and Jonathan turns it down a little. Steve actually recognizes the song, but he can’t name it, so he gently pushes Jonathan’s hand out of the way to turn the dial in the opposite direction.

“You like this song?” Jonathan asks.

“Can’t remember what it’s called, but yeah. I guess that means you hate it,” he says, shooting Jonathan a grin over his shoulder.

“Boys of Summer,” he replies, and Steve smacks his own thigh in realization as he nods. “I don’t hate it. My mom really likes the Eagles.”

“This is why you’re the smart one,” Steve says, the easy grin lingering as he sits back against the seat. He can see Jonathan yawn from the corner of his eye and reaches for his keys where they hang from the ignition. “You ready to call it quits?” he asks.

“I get tired when I smoke,” Jonathan explains, tucking a strand of hair back behind his ears thoughtlessly. Steve watches the movement with his full attention focused on the delicate brush of Jonathan’s hand, then realizes he’s being _so_ weird right now and fumbles to turn the keys so the engine will roar to life.

“No worries,” Steve says as he shifts into reverse and heads back towards town. 

The radio is still playing and wind whips through the car as Steve takes familiar roads to the Byers’ house. It’s just past midnight and Steve finds himself wishing this night didn’t have to end. He would never dream of saying such a thing, but being around Jonathan makes him feel different in a way he’s not really sure he understands.

The drive back is too short for Steve’s liking, and before he knows it, he’s stopped in the driveway again and Jonathan’s hand is on the door handle. He’s fidgeting nervously with his free hand, looking like there’s something he wants to say before he goes. Steve figures he’s just not used to hanging out with someone who isn’t his younger brother, so he takes pity on Jonathan and turns the radio down.

“I had fun,” he says easily, leaning over on the glovebox and clapping Jonathan on the shoulder.

“So did I, actually,” Jonathan replies, only startling a little at the contact as he pushes the door open.

“Actually?” Steve repeats, rolling his eyes at Jonathan with a laugh. “Don’t sound so surprised.”

“You’re totally surprised, too,” Jonathan replies, ducking after he steps out so he can look at Steve when he speaks.

Steve can’t keep from smiling as he raises a shoulder and says, “maybe.”

“Whatever. Thanks… for the weed and everything,” Jonathan says softly.

“Any time,” Steve replies as Jonathan straightens up and lets the door fall closed behind him. 

Steve waits in the idling car to make sure Jonathan gets inside safely before he turns back towards his house, trying to ignore the way he can’t seem to stop smiling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> follow me over on tumblr at steveharringtonkin for more stonathan nonsense and maybe for fic updates? i’ve just had to go back to work, but i’m going to try and keep posting pretty regularly!


	7. The Call

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> quick lil tw on this one for child abuse. it's a brief scene and not all that graphic in nature, but be safe if that's a sensitive subject for you!!

Following the night at the lake, Steve doesn’t see Jonathan for nearly a week. It’s ridiculous, considering he’s usually dropping any assortment of kids off at the Byers’ home at least two or three times a week, and they work less than two hundred feet away from each other, for God’s sake. Steve is a little worried that Jonathan is avoiding him on purpose, but Robin keeps reassuring him that there’s literally no reason for that to be the case.

Mostly, it seems like they keep just missing each other. Robin will clock out and mention that Jonathan had gotten off work shortly before Steve arrived, or he’ll drop Dustin off and find out that Jonathan has just left for his shift. He wishes it wasn’t driving him so crazy.

The biggest issue came the morning after he and Jonathan had hung out. Steve had woken late in the day, jostled into consciousness by a particularly strange dream. Some parts of it were kind of fuzzy, because Steve rarely remembers his dreams unless they cross into nightmare territory, but what he did remember left him feeling rattled. The dream had started out like a retelling of the evening, with the only real inconsistency being that Steve and Jonathan were sharing the joint in the front seat of his car instead of out on the hood. They’d laughed and talked just like they had in reality, but as time went on, Steve realized there was one incredibly glaring difference.

In his brain’s fabricated version of the evening, Jonathan had been tucked neatly against Steve’s side and Steve had had his arm tossed casually over Jonathan’s shoulders. He’d felt comfortable and happy, laughing as Jonathan held the joint up to Steve’s lips so he could take his next hit. They’d been so easily affectionate with each other and Steve had felt this pull towards Jonathan he couldn’t deny even in the realm of his dreams. Jonathan’s face had been tipped up towards him and, as the boy lowered the joint, Steve had leaned in to kiss him.

It was then that Steve woke suddenly, breathing heavily as if he’d woken from another nightmare about a faceless, plant-like monster. He blinked a few times, rubbing his eyes to push away the visions still lingering behind his lids. Having weird dreams wasn’t really anything new for Steve, but he’d never had one like this before. He had less than no idea what to make of it, but the thing that stuck with him the most is how happy he’d seemed in the dream, and how pointedly not weird it had felt to be with Jonathan like that. Relocating the thoughts to the back of his mind, Steve had gone about his day as normal, figuring it was some weird one-off kind of thing, and thus was nothing to worry about.

That had been before the dream had become recurring, and before Jonathan had seemed to drop off the face of the planet. Now, Steve is starting to feel crazy with no idea who to turn to, so when his shift ends late in the afternoon on Wednesday, Steve goes home with the singular focus of calling Robin to sort this whole thing out. He’s positive that she’s going to make fun of him at least a little, but he really doesn’t have an alternative, so he’s just going to have to grin and bear it. 

Steve hadn’t bothered to change before leaving work today, so he swaps his work uniform out for regular clothes and tosses it into the washing machine before he dials Robin’s number from the safety of his room. His parents are still absent, but he feels so out of his depths talking about these dreams that he feels as if he needs to hide away to spill his secrets to the only person he knows who might get it.

Steve waits for one, two, three rings before the phone is answered and he can hear Robin breathing a little heavy, as if she’d just sprinted to pick up the phone before she says, “hello?”

“Hey,” Steve says, smiling just at the sound of her voice.

“Steve? What’s up?” She asks, immediately sounding suspicious.

“Can’t a guy call his friend for no reason?”

“Not if the guy is Steve Harrington _and_ the guy has been stuck in ‘does he hate me?’ limbo for days now,” Robin replies, making Steve roll his eyes even if she can’t see him. “Did you see him today and find a new way to epically put your foot in your mouth?”

“ _No_ ,” Steve says, already regretting calling her for advice. “I did… call about him, though.”

“Steve, I told you to just relax and not get all worked up over nothing,” Robin reminds him, and he can hear her shuffling around to get comfortable over the line. 

“I’m not worked up,” Steve defends, but he knows that’s not really the truth. “Well, I kind of am, but not over the fact that I haven’t seen him. Just… don’t laugh, okay?”

“No promises.”

“Yeah, whatever. I’m desperate enough that I don’t even care if you laugh.” Steve pauses, taking a deep breath and blurting out, “I’ve been having dreams about him.”

Robin is quiet for a few moments, which Steve figures is better than being met by her cackling laughter at how ridiculous he’s being right now. She takes a breath that mirrors his own before she speaks. “Like… _those_ kind of—” she starts before Steve cuts her off.

“No! God, Robin, no!”

“Hey, I don’t know!” She defends. “Okay, alright. What are the dreams about, then?”

“It’s basically the same one over and over. We go out to the lake and get stoned in my car every time. Everything is pretty much how it was when we actually hung out, but we’re like… together?” Steve finishes, his face feeling flushed.

“Together?”

“Yeah, like, we’re holding hands or I have my arm around him or something like that. I always try to kiss him and right as it’s about to happen, I wake up,” he says. Steve is met with silence again, only sure Robin is still there because he can hear the soft shushing of her breaths. 

“You’re having gay dreams about Jonathan Byers?” She asks, and he can hear the barely restrained laughter in her voice.

“Okay, bye. Thanks for nothing,” Steve mumbles, already pulling the receiver away from his ear when he hears her protest.

“No, Steve, I’m sorry! I’m sorry,” Robin says, chuckling slightly under her breath. “You know you don’t have to be gay just because I’m gay, right?” She teases, and Steve is _this_ close to hanging up on her for real.

“You’re really not helping,” he says instead. 

“Do you think it means anything?” Robin asks, ignoring his complaint. 

“I was hoping you’d be the one to answer that.”

“Well, I can’t, really, so… okay. Do you,” Robin starts before pausing as if she’s not sure she should finish the question.

“Do I what?”

“Do you want it to mean something?” Robin asks in a quick exhalation of breath. 

Steve hasn’t really thought about that, and he’s not sure he’s really ready to consider if he wants the dreams to mean anything or not. “I hung out with the guy once,” he says in lieu of a real answer.

“So?”

“So I… I don’t know,” Steve says, raking a hand through his hair. “I called him a queer,” he confesses.

“On Friday?” Robin prompts and Steve shakes his head before he remembers she can’t actually see him.

“No,” he says quickly. “When we fought in high school.”

“Why’d you call him that?” Robin asks, and the question makes Steve pause for a long moment. 

“I don’t know,” Steve says after a pause. “It’s, like, something people say to hurt people or whatever. Like, my dad calls me that all the time.” The confession is met with dead silence on the other line, so quiet that Steve isn’t even sure Robin’s breathing right now, so he prompts her by saying, “what?”

“When he… calls you that,” Robin starts slowly. “Is it just, like, he’s calling you stupid or something?”

“No,” Steve answers easily. “It’s usually about spending too long on my hair or wearing certain clothes or… or something like that.”

Once the words are out in the open, Steve feels different. He’s never talked to anyone about the way his parents treat him, and he’s not completely sure he meant to in this conversation, but now it’s out there and Steve feels like he’s seven years old again. 

Unprompted, Steve remembers coming home from school one day with dandelions placed delicately in his hair and the feeling of Danny Fisher’s hand held tightly in his own still fresh at the forefront of his mind. Excitedly, he’d told his mother about how they’d spent their time at recess picking flowers for each other even as they kept their fingers entwined and he’d watched as her expression turned dark and angry. He hadn’t been sure what it was that he’d said that was wrong, but he’d known he must’ve done something really bad, because that look was usually saved for when he learned a curse word from the fourth graders or when he spilled orange juice all over the newly washed tablecloth. 

His father had come home shortly after, which had led to a hushed conversation in his parents’ bedroom that made Steve’s stomach twist into knots. He’d been certain they were talking about him, and he remembered wishing he knew what he’d said that was so bad so he could take it back and fix the problem he’d so obviously created. When the door to his parents’ room had opened again, his mother was notably absent. Steve’s father had made him recount the story as it had been told to his mother and when he finished, his father seemed to think for a moment before striking Steve across the face so suddenly that the action dislodged one of the flowers from Steve’s hair. Steve had been told that if he so much as ever thought about another boy like that again, the punishment would be far worse.

Steve had cried and cried as he pulled each flower out of his hair, the words reverberating in his mind. He’d gone to school the next day and shoved Danny down in the grass, even though it hurt in a way he was too young to understand. Danny had cried and cried just like Steve had the night before, but that hadn’t stopped Steve from repeating the words he’d heard from the mouth of a man who had always been his hero. _There’s nothing worse than being a queer._

When Steve jolts back to reality, it’s to the sound of Robin repeating his name over and over. His face is wet with tears he doesn’t remember giving himself permission to shed and he wipes them away hastily, clearing his throat before he’s able to say something.

“I’m here, sorry,” he says quickly, grateful for the way his voice sounds relatively even and normal. “Just… I just remembered something.”

“Are you okay? You don’t sound okay,” Robin says, and Steve smiles weakly at how well she seems to understand him.

“Yeah, yeah. I just… I used to hold hands with Danny Fisher in second grade and, like, I told my mom and dad about it and they made it really clear that that wasn’t who I was or how they had raised me, I guess,” Steve rambles, purposefully sidestepping the more unsavory details of the story.

Robin sighs before saying, “fuck that.”

It makes Steve laugh as he nods in wholehearted agreement. “Yeah. Fuck that.”

“I can’t believe you have a crush on Jonathan Byers,” Robin says, like it’s payback for his comments about Tammy Thompson. 

The jibe makes him laugh, though, and it’s easier now to banish that bad memory back to some far away corner of his brain. Steve isn’t really sure if he has a crush on Jonathan, or even what he would do about it if he did, but knowing Robin is here and understands this makes it not feel as world-shatteringly scary.

“I don’t have a crush on him. I’m not 13 years old.”

“You should call him.”

“Oh, no. No, no, no,” Steve says quickly, already embarrassed despite the fact that nothing has even happened yet. 

“Not to confess your love,” Robin assures, making Steve roll his eyes even if she can’t see it. “Just to hang out. You’re not gonna chill out about all of this until you see him again. Ask him to grab dinner or something. You know, that thing you’re keeping me from right now?”

Robin’s right and Steve knows it, but he feels nervous in a way that’s somehow both very familiar and incredibly foreign at the same time. He doesn’t want to be the reason Robin misses a meal, though, so he promises he’ll call Jonathan and thanks her for putting up with him before he sets the receiver back in its cradle. 

Despite his promise, Steve finds it hard to actually place the call. He feels like it’s going to be weird, just calling and asking Jonathan to grab a bite like they’re real friends when he figures they’re casual acquaintances at best. Steve paces back and forth through his room for about thirty minutes before biting the bullet and punching in the Byers’ number, bouncing anxiously on his toes as he waits for someone to pick up.

Because God is either merciless or not real, Joyce is the one who picks up the phone, and the sound of her voice startles him so much he almost drops the white plastic receiver. He’d only prepared himself to talk to Jonathan, but he’s good with parents and he hopes Will at least speaks fondly of him even if Jonathan doesn’t. He can do this. 

“Hi, Mrs. Byers. It’s Steve… uh, Harrington?” He finishes lamely.

“Oh, Steve. How many times do I have to tell you to just call me Joyce? Are you with Dustin? Will mentioned something about having plans with his friends and I told him I would take him over to the Wheelers’ but I got called into work and Jonathan works a little while longer and you know how impatient they all get about seeing each other. Would you mind picking him up on your way?” She asks, her tone every bit as warm and motherly as he’s come to expect.

“Sorry, Joyce,” he apologizes quickly, knowing she’s going to be correcting him for as long as he’s able to pass off a group of children as his friends. “Sure, of course,” he says, about to say more until he’s cut off by the sound of Will in the background. 

“Actually, Dustin’s going to ride his bike over so we can go together,” Will says in the background. He can hear Joyce speaking away from the phone, but can’t make out what either of them is saying. She doesn’t sound thrilled, but soon enough she must agree.

“Alright, I guess they’ve come up with a plan. I’ll have Jonathan pick them up and bring them home. I don’t like it when Will....” she starts, not finishing the sentence. Steve knows where it was going, though. “Thank you for being willing, though.”

“Yeah, of course. It’s no problem,” he says. “Um, could you have Jonathan call me when he can?” He adds at the very end, rushed and embarrassed.

“Jonathan? Sure, honey. I’ll let him know. I’ve got to get going. Sorry to rush off and thank you again for being willing to drive them! You know how they are with these last minute plans, though,” Joyce says, getting out a frantic goodbye before the line goes dead.

Steve flops back down onto his bed and pushes his hair back from his forehead. All he can do now is wait.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry this one took a little longer! turns out being a barista during a pandemic is even more wack than i anticipated. thank you all for being patient with me!
> 
> i'm on tumblr over at steveharringtonkin! come talk to me abt stonathan or something idk i'm nice i swear


	8. The Diner

Steve is asleep when the phone rings. It can’t be that late, because the summer sun still hangs in the sky, visible through his bedroom window, and everyone he knows has been warned not to call late on the off chance his parents are actually home. He bolts upright and reaches for the phone, bringing it up to his ear in a rush.

“Hello?” He says, his voice thick with sleep even though he doesn’t think he’s been out for more than an hour. The clock on his bedside table reads 7:39, which confirms his suspicion that it hasn’t been too long.

“Hey. Uh, it’s Jonathan. Were you asleep?” Jonathan asks.

Clearing his throat before he speaks, Steve shakes his head, even though he absolutely was. “No,” he lies to try and save face and not come off like a total loser.

“Uh, okay.” Jonathan is quiet for a moment before he speaks again. “My mom said you called?”

“Oh!” Steve says quickly, his sleep-addled brain having forgotten that he’s been waiting on a call from Jonathan. Just like that, all his earlier anxiety is back with a vengeance. “Yeah, I did. I just… uh, wanted to know if maybe you wanted to grab dinner or something?”

Jonathan pauses again and the resulting silence drives Steve’s heart right up into the back of his throat as he waits for an answer. Even though they’d had a good time last weekend, that doesn’t mean Jonathan is ready to dive headfirst into this friendship and Steve suddenly feels like maybe he shouldn’t have called. Before he can spiral any further, Jonathan answers.

“Yeah, okay. Sure. I have to pick up Will at ten, though.”

“Yeah, I figured. Your mom tried to get me to do it,” Steve says with a soft laugh. “Don’t apologize for it,” he tacks on quickly, knowing enough about the Byers family as a unit to expect the oncoming apology.

“How... never mind. When did you wanna go?” Jonathan inquires.

“I could head over now?” Steve offers, already getting to his feet. “We could go to the diner.”

“Sounds good. See you soon?” Jonathan asks, the tone of his voice telling Steve all he needs to know about whether or not Jonathan fully trusts him yet or not. He kind of perpetually sounds like he thinks Steve is going to pull the rug out from under him at any moment, but Steve thinks they can work on it.

“Yeah, give me about fifteen?”

“Sure. Bye, Steve,” Jonathan says, hanging up without waiting for a response.

Steve all but springs into action, changing into a shirt that isn’t sweaty from his impromptu nap and jogging to the bathroom to fix his hair. It’s a little flat on one side, so he combs it out and reapplies hairspray, restoring the style he usually wears it in. Satisfied with his appearance, Steve thunders down the stairs, snatching his keys and wallet up off the kitchen table on his way out to the car.

When he starts up the beemer, he cranks the volume on the radio before peeling out of the driveway. It’s been left on the station Jonathan had chosen out at the lake ever since that night and Steve has heard more weird underground music in the past few days than he had in his whole life prior. Every so often, the station plays a song he knows, but right now it's broadcasting something moody with a lot of drums. He doesn’t hate it, but he can’t say he loves it, either. At the very least, Steve hopes that Jonathan will notice when he’s back in the car.

Not long after leaving, Steve is in the driveway of the Byers’ home. He’d planned on going up to the door and knocking, but only seconds after he pulls up, Jonathan is making his way out of the house and across the gravel driveway. Steve knows that must mean he’d been watching out the window and waiting for Steve to arrive, and the knowledge makes his stomach do a little flip that he definitely doesn’t have time to think any harder about.

Jonathan slips into the car with a breathy, “hey.” Steve grins as he returns it and turns the volume down on the radio. Jonathan’s hair looks a little damp, like maybe he’d taken a shower after work and before he’d called Steve back, and he’s still wearing jeans despite the heavy warmth that’s standard for a July day in Hawkins. Steve watches as recognition dawns on Jonathan’s face and he gives a smile with closed lips.

“Gotta say, I’m surprised you’re still listening to this stuff,” Jonathan says, his head already bobbing along to another song Steve has never heard before.

“I guess it isn’t totally horrible,” Steve says, leaning forward across the dashboard for his sunglasses and perching them atop his nose to keep the setting sun from blinding him.

“There’s no Madonna, or Elton John, or whatever other shitty pop music you’re into,” Jonathan points out as Steve drives, and Steve wishes Jonathan could see him roll his eyes from behind the dark shades of his glasses.

“Just for that, I’m changing it,” Steve says, reaching for the dial. Before his fingers make contact, Jonathan’s hand is on the knob, and Steve’s fingers crash against it. The momentary contact makes Steve’s heart pound uncomfortably in his chest, but he plays at unaffected, letting out a casual laugh. “Okay, asshole. Fine. Leave it.”

He can see Jonathan’s victorious grin as the other boy leans back against the seat, lulled into a false sense of security by Steve’s apparent surrender. As soon as his guard seems to be let down, Steve flips the dial back to the local pop station. The car is immediately filled with the sounds of Prince’s Raspberry Beret. Steve _loves_ this song, so he cranks the volume up before guarding the dial carefully with the palm of the hand he’s not using to steer. Jonathan is laughing and Steve wants to keep him that way, so as the song hits the last chorus, Steve sings along, throwing his head back dramatically as he belts. He sounds like shit, but Jonathan is shaking his head while he laughs and looks at Steve, so Steve doesn’t let his embarrassment stop him and finishes out the song.

“You totally blow,” Jonathan says with a laugh as the music fades out and Steve turns the volume back down.

“I think you’re just jealous,” Steve says, glancing over to grin at Jonathan. “That’s how I won Nancy over. Is that not what you did?”

Jonathan lets out another small laugh, but it dies quickly as he shakes his head. “That’s definitely not what I did,” he replies after a brief moment of silence.

Steve pulls into the diner parking lot and parks, motioning with his head for Jonathan to follow him out of the car. He stands and lifts his sunglasses to rest on top of his head now that the sun isn’t directly in his eyes. The two of them make their way inside in silence and Steve asks the waitress, a girl he thinks was a year or two above him in school, for a booth for two, which she leads them to while making small talk with Steve. He can tell she’s flirting with him, but he’s nothing more than polite as he exchanges pleasantries. 

Sliding into the far end of the booth, Steve watches Jonathan keep his eyes trained downwards as if he’s intruding upon something. He doesn’t want any more awkwardness between them, so he pushes his foot against Jonathan’s shin under the table.

“Stop acting like I’m gonna ditch you for the waitress at any moment,” he teases.

“You say that like it’s not something you totally would do,” Jonathan grumbles back, only meeting Steve’s eyes for a quick second as he looks over the menu.

“That’s totally _not_ something I would do,” Steve says emphatically. “Don’t worry, Byers. She’s got nothing on you.”

Steve is pushing it with the flirting, he’s sure, but the images that haunt his dreams aren’t far from his mind now that he’s sitting here across from Jonathan. The other boy’s face flushes prettily and he reaches up to brush his hair back behind his ear. Steve can’t tear his eyes away as Jonathan performs such a simple action, following it up by flipping to the next page of the menu, and he also can’t pretend it’s because he’s high this time.

The waitress returns and Steve orders a strawberry milkshake, rolling his eyes dramatically when Jonathan sticks with water. Jonathan catches him doing it and slaps the menu closed with a little huff. Steve can’t help but let a mischievous grin lift his lips as Jonathan redirects his gaze to meet Steve’s eyes. 

“What?” He asks, his defensive tone turning Steve’s smirk into a full-blown smile.

“Nothing!” Steve defends. “Just… I’m paying for your dinner, so you can order something other than water if you wanna.”

“You’re not paying for my dinner,” Jonathan argues immediately.

“I guess we’ll see,” Steve replies with a shrug, leaning back against the booth and kicking his feet up on Jonathan’s side.

“Is this how you got Nancy, too?” Jonathan asks, trying and failing to hide a smile.

“Are you implying that I’d use the same techniques to get you that I used to get Nancy? Because I find that offensive,” Steve jokes.

The atmosphere around them suddenly changes, but before either of them can say anything, the waitress is back to take their orders. She looks to Steve first and he’s ready to continue on as if nothing happened, but before he can get a word out, Jonathan is slipping out of the booth and making a break for the door. They both watch him go in confusion, and Steve sighs as he runs a hand through his hair.

“We’ll be right back, I swear,” Steve promises her before he gets up to go after Jonathan, who’s already pacing beside his car in the parking lot. “What the hell just happened?” Steve asks him when he’s pushed through the front door of the diner and can actually speak to Jonathan.

“Please just take me home,” Jonathan says, looking down at his shoes.

“What? No,” Steve says quickly, stepping closer to Jonathan. “Just… just talk to me, man. Tell me what I did wrong and I… I’ll fix it!” Steve says, cursing how frantic his voice sounds. He’s just never been good at dealing with confrontation about anything serious, probably stemming from years of trying to mediate his parents’ screaming matches.

“I knew this was all some… some stupid joke,” Jonathan says, hurt that Steve doesn’t understand clear in his voice.

“Dude, what?” Steve says, yanking his hair slightly as he pushes it back again. “Can you just, like, stop talking in riddles?”

“Can you stop messing with me? Obviously Nancy or Will or my mom or… or someone told you the real reason Nancy and I broke up and I’m sure you think it’s so funny that you were right in high school.” Jonathan lets out a humorless laugh and reaches for the door handle on the passenger side. “I really thought you grew up. I really just wanna go home, man,” he says, pulling the door open with an aggressive yank.

“Byers, I…” Steve starts, no less confused than he was inside. “Jonathan, I have… no fucking clue what you’re talking about right now,” he confesses, but Jonathan is pulling the door shut on him, so he catches it in his left hand, leaving Jonathan no choice but to look at him. “Can we just go inside and talk about whatever you’re so upset about? I promised I’d come back to pay for the shake and everything.”

Steve knows there’s a pretty good chance Jonathan is going to refuse and demand to be taken home again, because he may not know everything about Jonathan, but he knows without a doubt that the other boy is stubborn as all hell. He watches as Jonathan sighs and hauls himself back out of the car before heading back towards the diner. Shutting the door, Steve follows after Jonathan, sliding back into the booth. Their waitress hesitantly comes by and Steve orders a breakfast platter just like he does every time he comes in. He takes a few deep breaths to calm himself and listens as Jonathan reluctantly orders a burger. 

With their orders taken, there’s nothing left to do but talk. Steve pulls the extra straw out of his water and sticks it into the frothy pink shake before sliding it towards Jonathan as a peace offering of sorts. Jonathan pulls it closer but doesn’t take a sip, just cradling it between his hands and staring downward.

“Okay, so if you’re not gonna talk first, I’m just gonna clarify that I’m not like, fucking with you or anything. I asked you to hang out last week because I _wanted_ to. I called today because I _wanted_ to. You’re…” Steve starts, lowering his voice and leaning in closer so no one else can hear him. “Shit, Jonathan, you’re one of two people my age I can tell that I keep a bat full of nails in my trunk in case I have to fight off another monster this summer without sounding like I should be locked up somewhere. So I’m not… not trying to be a dick to you, no matter what you think, and no one told me _anything_ about you and Nancy,” he finishes, watching as Jonathan ducks his head to sip at the milkshake before sliding it back. 

Steve catches the glass between his hands and tips it so he can lean back in the booth and drink it at the same time. Jonathan still won’t look at him, so Steve props his feet up again and tilts them so he can lightly hit Jonathan’s thigh. It’s childish, but Jonathan looks up to glare at him, so Steve isn’t really sorry.

“Come on,” he prods gently. “Just talk to me. I’m good with secrets, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

Steve watches Jonathan’s shoulders droop as he exhales and closes his eyes for the briefest moment before he’s looking at Steve again. He’s so serious that it makes Steve a little anxious, and more than anything he just wants Jonathan to explain what’s going on in his head so Steve can take whatever pain and fear he’s clearly feeling away from him.

“I didn’t break up with Nancy over getting us fired,” Jonathan mumbles, keeping his eyes trained down on the table between them. “I mean, that was my breaking point, but I… I knew for months it wasn’t gonna work, or whatever.”

The words carry so much weight that Steve doesn’t dare interrupt Jonathan for fear that he won’t start talking again if he’s stopped. Instead, he puts down the milkshake he’s been working on while Jonathan speaks and leans forward to encourage him to keep talking.

“It’s… Nancy’s great,” he says, still not meeting Steve’s eyes and sounding like he’s trying to convince himself he believes the words. “But, like, remember what I said when we were stoned? About how all I could think about after we broke up was you?” He asks, his voice so soft that Steve can do nothing more than nod along. “You really loved her and I… I guess I thought I did.”

Jonathan trails off, but it’s obvious he has more to say, so Steve says, “but?”

“But I think I was wrong. It’s, like, it’s what I said about high school. The shit you called me? It was true.” Jonathan looks so small across from him, so vulnerable and scared that Steve is about to crucify him for what he’s just said, but Steve still doesn’t really understand.

“I was an _asshole_ to you in high school,” he reminds Jonathan. “Nothing I said was true.”

“Steve,” Jonathan says, glancing up at him finally. The tone of his voice is so soft and scared, just like Robin’s had been when she came out to him and, oh. _Oh._

He feels even more out of depth here than he had with Robin, because he and Robin are already real friends, but he and Jonathan are still teetering on the precipice of that possibility. Some stupid part of Steve’s brain considers telling him about the dreams he’s been having, but a voice in his head that sounds shockingly like Robin tells him that that’s a terrible idea. Before he can say anything, Jonathan is rambling.

“I’m sorry. I know it’s weird and gross and wrong and whatever, so like, we can eat and just pretend this never happened like we pretend everything else we’ve been through didn’t happen and you don’t have to stick around. Just… don’t tell anyone, okay? Mom and Will know, and Nancy knows, obviously, but I’d really rather this didn’t turn into some whole thing.”

Jonathan’s not looking at him again and Steve feels sick with worry for him. He takes one more moment to center himself before he says, “don’t be stupid.” Jonathan’s head snaps up, an offended look all over his features. “Byers,” Steve says with a reassuring smile. “I put myself between a plant faced monster and you two years ago after you broke my nose in an alley, remember? If you wanna scare me off, it’s really gonna take a lot more than just you being gay, okay?” He assures, keeping his voice extremely quiet as he leans across the table and bumps his knees against Jonathan’s underneath it.

The waitress chooses then to arrive with their food, so Steve leans back so she can set the plates down in front of them. After assuring her they don’t need anything, she shuffles away and Steve pushes his milkshake back towards Jonathan with another soft smile. More than anything, he wants Jonathan to know that he’s going to keep this secret safe and that he’s not the guy he was three years ago. He cares about Jonathan in a way even he doesn’t understand yet, but he can’t dwell on it as much as he’d like to, because his stomach gives an angry, hungry gurgle that’s audible over the soft bustle of the restaurant. Jonathan laughs softly as he picks up his burger and Steve flips him off jokingly, laughing himself.

“I think we can agree now that I should pay,” Jonathan says between bites.

“I think you’re completely wrong about that,” Steve replies as he wolfs down his eggs and starts in on the hashbrowns.

“Are you serious? I made, like, a whole scene.”

“Uh-huh,” Steve says around a mouthful of fried potatoes, swallowing the bite before he continues. “Pretty sure everyone in here thinks I’m on the least successful first date of all time,” he jokes, smiling as Jonathan rolls his eyes and color rises to his cheeks. 

“Shut up,” he says, munching idly on a handful of fries. Steve finds himself staring again, this time at Jonathan’s mouth. There should be less than nothing attractive about what he’s doing right now, but he thinks Jonathan looks younger and less guarded, and he decides immediately that he likes it. 

They chat idly as they eat, opting for a lighter conversation about the kids, Jonathan’s mom, how much they hate their jobs, and Robin. As the night goes on, the milkshake slowly disappears after being passed back and forth between them for so long. Time flies just as it had the night at the lake and before Steve knows it, it’s quarter to ten and he’s rushing out of the booth to beat Jonathan to the cash register so he can pay for their dinners. Jonathan is a couple of inches shorter than Steve and years of basketball practice make him good at keeping people from getting past him, so he’s able to pay without much interference from Jonathan.

“I’m paying next time,” Jonathan grumbles as they get in the car.

“Yeah, no, you’re not,” Steve says with a chuckle as he puts the car in reverse and heads towards the Wheelers’ to pick up Will and Dustin.

“You’re an ass.”

“Yeah, you’ve mentioned that once or twice. I’ll let you pick the music this time?” Steve offers. 

Jonathan is still pouting, but he does turn the knob back to the station he likes better, which makes Steve smile. He keeps the volume fairly low, though he seems to know every song that plays, and it makes Steve wonder if there’s something on his mind. He doesn’t have to wonder for long, because Jonathan starts talking when they’re a few minutes out from the Wheelers’ house.

“Thanks for being cool about everything,” he says, to which Steve nods immediately.

“It’s seriously fine,” he promises gently, reaching over to squeeze Jonathan’s thigh reassuringly just like he’d wanted to last weekend when he felt like he couldn’t. 

Jonathan just stays silent as Steve pulls up on the house and beeps his horn just like he always does when he comes to pick the kids up. Only about a minute later, the boys come tumbling out on each others’ heels. Steve watches with a grin as Lucas heads off towards home and Will and Dustin wheel their bikes towards his waiting car. They wrestle them into the trunk as Mike waves from the garage and Steve can hear them all yelling their goodbyes. Soon enough, the boys pour into the backseat, still talking loudly until Steve shushes them a little.

“Okay, okay. Time to pretend you’re civilized,” he chastises, making sure they’re buckled up before putting the car back in drive. 

“Since when do you hang out with Jonathan?” Dustin asks, poking his head into the front seat until Steve uses a hand to push him gently back by the face.

“Since when do you care about who I hang out with?” He replies.

“Uh, since it was Jonathan you’re hanging out with. He kicked your ass!”

Steve sighs heavily, but he can hear Jonathan’s poorly concealed snort of a laugh from the passenger side. “Who’s side are you on here, Byers?”

“No one’s,” Jonathan promises, his hands raised in surrender.

“Your mom told me to make you stop swearing,” Steve reminds the younger boy. “He didn’t kick my ass,” Steve defends after a moment, which sets Jonathan off for real, Dustin echoing his laughter. “Okay,” Steve says, pretending to slow down to pull over. “Only Will is allowed to stay since he’s the only one who knows how to behave.”

The whole car erupts with noise, mostly from Jonathan and Dustin protesting such obviously unfair treatment and Will celebrating being rewarded for not bullying Steve. With a sigh, he gets back up to speed, just to get them all to shut up.

“He kind of did kick your ass,” Will chimes from the back seat, which gets the other two going all over again.

Steve groans as he pulls into Dustin’s driveway and comes to a slow stop. “Tell your mom you’re lucky I didn’t ditch you in the middle of nowhere,” he says as Dustin gets out.

“I won’t!” Dustin says as he slams the door shut and goes for his bike.

Steve rolls his eyes, but still waits to make sure that Dustin makes it inside safely before heading back towards the Byers’.

Jonathan asks Will about the party’s latest campaign and Steve listens to them chat about it fondly, feeling a familiar ache in his chest. He’d always wanted siblings, loving the idea of having a built-in best friend from the second you’re born. It’s definitely why he’s so attached to Dustin, even when he’s being a little shit. The drive is way too short for Steve’s liking, but he would rather die than overstay his welcome, even if they are in his car right now. 

Jonathan and Will get out, Will thanking Steve profusely for the ride as he always does and going to grab his bike out of the trunk. Jonathan lingers in the open door, sending Will up and inside the house before he says anything.

“I’m paying next time,” he says, smiling a little. 

“We’ll see,” Steve replies, his smile matching Jonathan’s as he speaks.

“Oh, and Steve?” Jonathan says as he backs away from the car.

“Yeah?”

“I fucking hate strawberry milkshakes,” he confesses, the door closing before Steve has even a moment to respond. 

He watches Jonathan walk up the driveway to where Will is hanging around in the doorway, his mouth open incredulously. Jonathan waves before he closes the front door behind them and Steve can’t help but burst out laughing with a disbelieving shake of his head as he drives back towards his house. He’s a ways off from really knowing Jonathan, but he can’t wait for the day he doesn’t feel that way anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so it's been two months....... but taylor swift released that stonathan concept album so guess who's back on their bullshit


	9. The Milkshake

Today might be the day Robin finally snaps and kills him, Steve thinks as she makes a noise of frustration at him from where she sits with her legs dangling off the counter behind the register. He’d been thrilled to find out they were working together the day after his and Jonathan’s impromptu trip to the diner, because he had so much to tell her and doing it over the phone just wasn’t going to cut it. Animatedly, Steve had run through the entire story from start to finish, leaving out the part where Jonathan came out to him. Robin would keep her mouth shut, Steve was certain, but it still didn’t feel like his place to tell her after Jonathan had pointedly asked him to keep it quiet.

Mainly, Steve had been focused on the last minute of their conversation before Jonathan had closed the car door. Something about the admission that he didn’t really like strawberry milkshakes coming after he’d spent the last two hours willingly sharing one with Steve was sticking heavily with him, even as he pretended to focus on work. He’s spent the last thirty minutes trying to puzzle out what it meant, and from the sounds of it, Robin’s had enough.

“Why don’t you go over there and ask him yourself?” She suggests, pointing across the mall to where Jonathan has just appeared as if out of thin air. 

Steve lets his eyes follow the direction of the nearly accusatory finger to find that Jonathan’s already looking over at them, so Steve waves with a grin, hopeful Jonathan is starting to see them as actual friends. The wave is returned, albeit shyly, and Steve smiles wider before smacking Robin’s arm down from where she was still pointing at the storefront parallel to their own.

“Don’t be weird,” he says quickly, feeling his cheeks flush warmly.

“I think you’ve already got that covered,” Robin says, letting the heels of her shoes smack back against the cabinet below the partition. Steve gives a purposely fake laugh and rolls his eyes, leaning back against the counter that holds the various flavors of ice cream they’re supposed to be promoting. The dry laughter doesn’t stop Robin from picking on him, saying, “I’ve watched you try and fail to flirt with a hundred girls in the past month. How are you even more useless with him than them?”

“First of all, if it weren’t for this stupid outfit, I wouldn’t have failed even once.”

“So you’re into Jonathan just because he looks even more stupid than you do?” Robin asks, raising a questioning eyebrow that makes Steve feel even more as if he’s being mocked.

“I don’t even know if I’m into him,” Steve says, keeping his voice soft on the off chance someone comes in while he has his back turned. 

“You just spent, like, a hundred years agonizing over what it means if he doesn’t like strawberry milkshakes but still shared yours. I think it’s pretty safe to assume you like him. Do you care if I like strawberry milkshakes?”

“No, but it’s mostly because you’re mean to me,” Steve shoots back, crossing his arms over his chest.

“I think you’re gonna survive it. Maybe figure out how you feel about him before you worry about things as complex as milkshakes,” Robin suggests, hopping down from where she’s perched. “I’m going to the bathroom. Don’t burn the place down.”

Steve lets out another fake laugh as she pushes through the swinging door leading to the back, turning to face the mall again once she’s gone to find Jonathan’s talking to a guy Steve recognizes from school. His name is Chris, Steve thinks, and Steve had never liked him one bit. He’s tall and blonde and _almost_ as attractive as Steve on his worst day, and right now he’s smiling at Jonathan with that stupid megawatt smile girls used to swoon over. Jonathan looks flushed even from a distance, his head ducked shyly and his fingers caught in the strands of hair that have escaped the capture of his ridiculous hat.

Belatedly, Steve realizes that Chris is almost definitely flirting with Jonathan, and once he’s aware of it, he can feel the familiar and uncomfortable twist of jealousy deep in his chest. Before he can think it through, he’s scooping vanilla ice cream into the blender alongside milk and sugar. Robin reemerges right as he aggressively hits the button that blends the contents of the pitcher and it takes about three seconds for her gaze to flit across the mall and back to Steve. He watches recognition cross her face and it’s clear she’s picked up on the situation faster than Steve had. 

“What are we doing, Steve?” She asks as he grabs the blender and pours the mixture into a paper cup. 

All of his movements are harsh and he feels like he’s going to be sick if he doesn’t get between Jonathan and that naseauting pretty boy right this second. He ignores Robin’s question, mostly because he knows she doesn’t need it answered, and tosses his hat on the back counter as an afterthought as he swings around to the front of the counter.

“I’ll be right back,” he says, straightening up and plastering on a smile so he comes off as charming instead of threatening. 

The ice cream is radiating cold through the paper cup he’d filled with it, and he’s holding the straw so tightly against it that he’s pretty sure the plastic is going to be bent when it’s removed from its wrapper. Steve does his best not to stalk across the mall, choosing instead to adopt a casual posture as he steps up to the counter. Chris hasn’t noticed him, but Jonathan’s eyes find his immediately, confusion clear on his face.

“Hey, Jonathan,” he says, not bothering to keep the softness out of his voice.

“Hey,” Jonathan says, sounding unsure and looking at Chris as the other boy turns to look at Steve.

Steve gives Chris the fakest smile he’s capable of, saying, “hey, man. It’s Carl, right?”

“Chris,” the boy in question corrects and Steve grins, shaking his head.

“Right. Must’ve forgotten,” he says cooly, turning his attention back to Jonathan. “Anyways, I just came to give you this. I figured it might be good repayment for making you share that strawberry shake you hated last night,” he says, setting the cup down in front of Jonathan and balancing the straw over the top. If he emphasizes words like _share_ and _last night_ , well, that’s hardly of any importance. 

Jonathan looks even more flustered than before, and Steve can hear the soft squeak of Chris’s shoes as he steps back and away from the counter. He does his best not to let himself smile at the retreat, but he can’t help feeling victorious.

“I didn’t realize,” Chris says, shoving his hands into his pockets. “I’ll, uh, see you guys around,” he mumbles before turning and heading in the opposite direction.

“What are you doing?” Jonathan asks, pulling Steve’s attention back to him.

“What? I just told you. I thought you might like vanilla better.”

“Yeah, but he… I think he was…” Jonathan starts before looking after Chris with a shake of his head. “Never mind. It’s nothing. Uh, thanks,” he says, picking the shake up as if clarification about what he was thanking Steve for was necessary.

“No problem. Got an endless supply of those things over there,” Steve says with a grin that widens when he catches a glimpse of Jonathan’s own shy smile. “Robin will kill me if I’m over here any longer, but maybe you could give me a call and let me know what you think about it?” Steve asks, already stepping away.

“Sure, yeah,” Jonathan replies, ripping the paper off of the straw as Steve turns back towards Scoops with a wave over his shoulder.

He should feel bad for scaring an obviously interested guy away from Jonathan, but he really doesn’t. When he makes it back to Scoops, Robin is staring at him with a knowing look on her face, and he raises his hands in mock surrender as he asks, “what?” 

“Are we ready to admit we have a crush on him now?” Robin asks patronizingly. 

Steve rolls his eyes, unable to reply as a family of five enters the store and he and Robin are forced to do their jobs. Once they clear out, Robin corners him again with a simple raise of her eyebrow, which he really wishes she would stop doing.

“Maybe,” he grumbles.

“You just ran over there to keep a super hot guy from flirting with him. Again I ask, would you do that if some really hot girl was hitting on me?”

“No,” Steve says, scuffing the toe of his sneakers on the colorful tile beneath them.

“Right answer,” Robin encourages, making Steve let out an anguished groan in response. “You know it’s okay, right?” She asks, her tone softer and less antagonistic now. “If you like him?”

Steve shrugs noncommittally, finding it unusually hard to meet Robin’s eyes all of a sudden. He doesn’t want to say that it doesn’t feel okay in the least or that his father’s voice in his head is so loud that it’s hard to focus on anything else, because he doesn’t want any of his own internal shit to make Robin feel how he does right now. His family had never been overly religious, only attending services on holidays like Christmas and Easter, but for some reason he can’t shake the idea that his feelings for Jonathan are sinful and dirty. There’s no way he can say any of that, especially not while they’re still in the mall where anyone could wander in and catch the tail end of their conversation before they're able to slap on their customer service faces, so he sticks with a nonanswer.

“I don’t know,” he says softly, still gazing down at a spot on the floor.

He can see Robin moving in his peripheral vision and before he knows it, her fingers are digging into his arm and she’s yanking him into the back. He stumbles with the force of how hard she’s pulling him, but doesn’t put up any real resistance, even if Steve has no idea what she’s doing right now. 

“What if there’s a customer?” Steve asks when the door swings closed behind them, even though he doesn’t really care as long as nothing Robin has planned is going to get him fired.

“Then they’ll ring the little bell Richard so lovingly installed for us,” Robin says, surprising him once more by crowding into his space. 

Before he can ask her what she’s doing, Robin’s arms are wrapped tightly around his waist and her head is resting on his shoulder. Without really thinking about it, Steve melts into the touch, his body going limp as he hugs her back. He can’t remember the last time he hugged someone and he has no idea how Robin always seems to know exactly what he needs before he himself knows, but he loves her for it. Steve wants to say something, anything, but words stick in his throat and he’s powerless to do anything but stand there and be held. The position makes him feel small and vulnerable, but he knows that Robin isn’t going to take advantage of the trust he’s placing in her right now.

Steve buries his face in her hair and just breathes deeply, the action causing his shoulders to shake ever so slightly with the weight of how much he’s feeling right now. He’s been lonely ever since the title of King Steve had been ripped away from him, and maybe even before that if he thinks about it enough, but he hadn’t realized just how used to it he’d become. 

“It’s okay,” Robin says, her voice hardly above a whisper as she starts to rub his back gently. “No one ever told me, but it is. It’s okay, Steve. I know I bullshit you a lot, but not about this. Promise.”

Steve lets out another shaky, fragile breath and nods. “It’s okay,” he repeats, both for her sake and for his own. 

He hates how much they both need this and, more than anything, he hates that he knows no one was there to do this for Robin whenever she first realized she liked girls. Steve squeezes her just a little tighter and makes a silent vow that he’s going to be there for her whenever she needs him for however long she decides to let him be her friend.

“You alright?” Robin asks softly, still not letting go, and Steve knows he must seem pathetic for clinging like this, but he can’t bring himself to release her just yet. 

“I think so, yeah,” he says, his own words just as quiet. “I… think I really fucking like him,” he confesses, the words leaving him feeling lighter even as he shakes a little. “I think I have for a long time.

“I can’t believe all it took was seeing him in an ugly ass outfit for you to realize,” Robin teases, stepping back and grinning up at Steve.

“Can you blame me? It’s such a good look,” he jokes as he smiles back. He already misses her warmth, so Steve pulls Robin back in for a brief moment before letting her go again. “Thanks,” he says when they part, brushing his hair back from where it’s flopped forward onto his forehead. “Think I might’ve needed that just a little.”

“It’s those Wonder Twin powers,” Robin says as she heads back towards the front of the shop. 

“You’re joking, but I think we’re like, paranormally linked or something.”

“Psychically,” Robin corrects easily. “God, I hope not. I can’t have you dragging me down like that,” Robin teases, knocking her hip against his as they laugh together.

Steve shakes his head and hazards a glance back at Hot Dog on a Stick just to see Jonathan helping out a couple of young boys. He still always looks a little miserable, but less so than he had the first day Steve had seen him, and he thinks that maybe everyone forced to wear such an ugly uniform must experience the same stages of grief before they eventually end up at acceptance and cut their losses. Steve respects Jonathan for getting there well before he’d been able to when he first got hired at Scoops Ahoy. 

Steve’s shift ends soon after his little moment with Robin and he heads home in somewhat of a daze, arriving at his front door without much memory of how he got there. Hawkins is so familiar to him, but it still feels… different now. He doesn’t really have the words to explain the way Hawkins had shifted and changed for him after all the monster shit went down, or how it shifts and changes after every random few hours he gets to spend with Jonathan, but he’s starting to think that maybe it doesn’t matter. The changes feel good, so why question them? Steve’s just determined to make the most of what’s left of the summer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sooo i'm unemployed now! i'm really hoping that if nothing else, that means i'll actually have time to keep working on this fic more regularly. this chapter is short and unbeta'd, but i hope you all like it. i mostly just really thought steve deserved a hug.
> 
> come chat w/ me about stonathan over on tumblr :)  
> steveharringtonkin.tumblr.com


	10. The Mixtape

Even though he had suggested Jonathan call him with his thoughts on the milkshake, Steve doesn’t really expect Jonathan to actually _want_ to call him at all, so when the phone rings at 11:47 pm, he expects to hear Dustin on the other end telling him that the world is ending all over again. He’d been on the verge of sleep, so he’s only half awake when he picks up and mumbles a greeting into the phone, sitting up in bed in a weak effort to prepare himself for whatever earth-shattering news awaits him. What he isn’t prepared for is to hear Jonathan on the other line, speaking so quietly that Steve isn’t completely sure he isn’t dreaming. 

“Do you wanna go smoke?” Jonathan asks, and Steve can’t help but laugh.

“Jesus, man,” he says. “No one calls me this late. I thought you were Dustin calling to tell me some monster shit was going down.” Steve lets out a breath and shakes his head a little incredulously. 

Jonathan lets out a soft laugh of his own before he says, “Sorry. No monster shit, I swear. I just can’t sleep.”

Something in Steve’s chest twists at the thought of Jonathan sitting up and thinking of him, but he ignores it in hopes that he can be normal about this. It’s probably just that Jonathan knows he has weed and nothing more, so Steve solidly does not get his hopes up. Well, he tries not to. 

“You wanna go smoke right now?” Steve asks, cursing his mouth for moving faster than his brain.

Immediately, Jonathan starts backtracking, saying, “You’re right, it’s late and everything. Sorry. I’ll just, um, I’ll go.”

“No, no!” Steve says entirely too quickly, blowing his plan to stay cool in an instant. “I mean, no. We can go smoke if you wanna. I can come pick you up?”

“Are you sure?” Comes Jonathan’s clearly nervous reply.

“As long as you can promise that Joyce isn’t going to murder me with her bare hands for this, then yeah. I’m sure.”

Jonathan laughs softly again before replying, “I sorta told her about last time.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah. She… she trusts you,” Jonathan nearly whispers.

“That’s kind of insane, you know. Trusting the guy who’s providing your son with illegal substances,” Steve jokes, trying to hide the way his heart is swelling in his chest and he can’t stop smiling. 

“It’s just one substance,” Jonathan counters, which makes Steve laugh and roll his eyes.

“Can’t argue with that,” he agrees. “I’ll be there in fifteen?”

“Don’t honk.”

“You can’t have told your mom about me and still be embarrassed when I come to pick you up,” Steve says, though he knows that’s not the reason Jonathan wants him to be quiet.

“Yeah, I can,” Jonathan replies. “I’m complex. See you when you get here.”

The line goes dead right after Jonathan finishes speaking and Steve can’t stop grinning as he heads out to his car. He’d been so tired from a busy shift, but now he feels wide awake, his whole body thrumming with a mixture of nerves and excitement. Jonathan had never been the one to initiate spending time together, so the fact that he was now felt like immense progress.

Steve does his best not to floor it the entire way to the Byers’ residence, but he only half succeeds. He figures there’s no harm in it, considering the streets are empty at this time of night, something that Steve actually appreciates about Hawkins. He makes it to the house in record time, pulling down the driveway slowly so as to make as little commotion as possible, and sees Jonathan already sitting out on the porch in anticipation of his arrival. The other boy makes his way to Steve’s car quickly and closes the door heavily once he slips into the passenger seat.

“It’s like you want to get caught,” Steve jokes, not missing the way Jonathan turns his head to hide his smile.

“I might have already gotten caught,” he confesses, which sends Steve into a fit of laughter. 

“What happened?” He asks once he’s finally calmed down enough to drive while Jonathan talks.

“Mom came out of her room to get water and saw me hang up the phone. She asked what I was doing and I told her I had called you. At that point I figured it was better to just ask if she was okay with it rather than try and lie my way out of it.”

“Can’t fault that logic. She was fine with it?” Steve asks, though he’s sure Jonathan’s presence in the car means that she had been.

“Yeah. I’m off work tomorrow, so she just told me to be smart and safe, and push you in front of any monsters we see,” Jonathan teases.

Steve pretends to look shocked, but it’s hard to keep from smiling as he says, “Bull fucking shit, man.”

“Yeah, what she actually said is you’ll probably just do something stupid like jumping in front of one before I even get the chance to push you,” Jonathan replies, laughing softly. 

Steve actually laughs this time, rolling his eyes even as he says, “Don’t make it sound so romantic.”

The streetlights they’re passing under give off just enough light that Steve can see the way Jonathan’s cheeks go warm and pink, and he has to bite his lip to keep from smiling triumphantly. Jonathan pushes a strand of hair behind his ear and starts to turn to face him, but Steve looks back to the road before he can be caught staring.

“The milkshake didn’t suck,” Jonathan says unprompted. “Thanks, by the way. For making it for me.”

“No problem,” Steve says as he heads towards the outskirts of town. “I have to make working for minimum wage worth it somehow, right?” He asks.

“Now I feel bad for charging you for your shitty hotdog.”

“Don’t, man,” Steve reassures. “You just don’t have the seniority that I do, you know? Richard isn’t gonna fire me over one free milkshake.”

“Haven’t you worked there for, like, two months?” Jonathan asks. 

Exactly!” Steve exclaims, purposefully missing the point just to make Jonathan laugh again as he heads away from town.

“Where are you taking me?” Jonathan asks after a moment of quiet. “If this is your plan to murder me,” he starts before Steve cuts him off.

“If this is my plan to murder you, it fucking sucks because you called me to hang out.”

Jonathan laughs loudly and Steve smiles in victory. This side of Jonathan is so different from who Steve had always thought he was in high school and he allows himself a brief moment to mourn the wasted time before he steps on the gas a bit more, the engine thrumming as they speed up. 

“Good point.”

“There’s this old gas station outside of town,” Steve explains. “Tommy and Carol used to go out there to smoke and hook up, but they haven’t gone out there in years, I don’t think.” Steve can see Jonathan smirk from the corner of his eye and he raises a questioning brow as he looks at the other boy fully. “What?” He asks.

“I’m not that kind of girl,” Jonathan says softly, not meeting Steve’s eyes.

The response startles a laugh out of Steve, but he can’t deny the way his heart races at the implication. Trying to play it cool just as he had on the phone, he says, “No?”

“No,” Jonathan replies, looking down at his lap pointedly. “At least, I don’t think so, I mean.”

“Alright,” Steve says, not wanting to push Jonathan and risk embarrassing him. “Well, get back to me when you figure it out.”

Steve pulls into the parking lot as he speaks and kills the engine, slipping out of the car quickly so that Jonathan won’t see the way his own cheeks have turned a bit rosy. He feels so out of his element in a way he never has with girls, but the late hour and the fact that Jonathan had been the one to reach out to him first is making him feel a little bit reckless. Introducing weed into the situation could yield potentially disastrous results, Steve knows, because his lips always get a little too loose when he’s high and Jonathan hasn’t called him on all the flirting yet anyways. Part of him is scared that it’s just because Jonathan is too polite to ask him to stop, but he hopes that’s nothing more than a fear based in his own insecurities.

Yanking his pack of cigarettes out of his pocket, Steve slides onto the hood, listening as Jonathan opens his door and places one foot on the pavement. He’s lingering in his seat, though, and Steve’s heart jumps into his throat. 

“Steve?” Jonathan calls, forcing Steve to turn his head and look at him through the windshield.

“Yeah?” He replies, failing at keeping the nervousness from his voice.

“Could I play some music?”

Steve sighs in relief and drops his head low between his shoulders as he says, “Yeah, man, sure. Keys are still in it.”

His thoughts are still racing as he listens to the faint sounds of Jonathan rustling in the car and the electrical hum of the battery when he turns it back on. Music fills the air suddenly, way too loud even from outside and Steve can hear Jonathan swear as he turns it back down. Finally, Jonathan exits the car and comes to rest on the hood beside him.

“Sorry,” Jonathan mumbles, which makes Steve smile a little.

“I don’t think you owe me an apology, but you might wanna check in with your eardrums,” he replies as he pulls out a joint and lights it with ease. He inhales deeply, feeling the smoke fill his lungs and sighing on the exhale.

Jonathan laughs as he says, “I turned the volume up before I put the tape in. I didn’t know it was gonna be that loud.”

Steve passes the joint to him, looking at him fully under the overhead street light that flickers every so often. “Tape?” He asks.

Jonathan takes a hit before he replies, still not meeting Steve’s eyes. The music drifts out from the car and Steve swears he can feel Jonathan thinking about his response. He hands the joint back to Steve, not keeping their fingers from delicately brushing, and Steve’s heart is right back up in his throat again. 

“Yeah, um… it’s stupid, but I made a tape of music I thought you might not hate,” Jonathan says, keeping his eyes trained on the old gas pumps in front of them.

Steve feels alarmingly like he might cry as he says, “Really?” He takes another hit, following it up with a second to hide the way his hands are shaking a little with the effort of being normal.

Jonathan nods, finally meeting Steve’s eyes as he gives a little shrug. “I thought it might be better than having to listen to you desecrate any more Prince songs,” he teases lightly.

Steve laughs, the wave of emotions passing as his high sets in. “You loved that and we both know it,” he replies, relaxing against the windshield as he hands Jonathan the joint again. He falls silent for a long moment before he says, “No one’s ever made me a mixtape.”

“Seriously?” Jonathan asks, coughing a little on the smoke from his last few hits. “I figured every girl in town had made you one at some point or another.”

Letting out another laugh as he snags the joint from Jonathan’s fingers, Steve shakes his head. “Definitely not,” he says, taking a long inhale and gathering his courage. The joint had been smaller than the last one they’d shared, so he flicks the end of it off into the weeds before he dares speak again. “Besides, I thought you weren’t like other girls.”

Jonathan tenses beside him and Steve regrets what he’s just said immediately. He’s too high now to deal with the consequences of his own actions and he feels like he’s going to be sick as he waits for Jonathan to reply. Steve has to slip his hands under his thighs to hide the way he’s shaking and he thinks if he looked at Jonathan right now he would just shake apart at the seams.

“I really don’t get why you’re doing this,” Jonathan finally says, and it’s not what Steve was expecting to hear. “I know my self esteem is pretty famously shitty, but I don’t need you to, like, flirt with me to… to boost my confidence or whatever.”

Desperately wishing he was sober is seeming to become a trend for Steve as he takes in what Jonathan has just said. It doesn’t make any sense and he _needs_ it to, because if he says the wrong thing here and ruins whatever he has with Jonathan just because he couldn’t keep his stupid mouth shut, he’ll never be able to forgive himself. 

“I… I’m not trying to boost your confidence,” Steve finally says, opting for honesty. He doesn’t think he has a chance at not screwing up majorly if he tries to talk his way out of this.

“Then what the fuck are you doing, man?” Jonathan asks, and Steve wishes his tone was accusatory. Instead, his voice is shaking and his fists are clenched so tight that Steve can see that his knuckles are white even in the relative darkness. 

He doesn’t know what to say, or how Jonathan seems totally sober right now even though Steve knows he isn’t. Jonathan finally turns to look at him and Steve can see the fear he’s feeling all over his face. More than anything, Steve wants to take that fear away, but he doesn’t know what the right thing to say is. He thinks hard, but nothing comes to him until he realizes that there just _isn’t_ a right thing to say here. At least, not for him. His entire life, Steve has been the type to express himself through his actions, because finding the right words has always felt impossible.

His heart is still thumping against his ribs, but the weed is giving Steve a sudden sense of calm. Jonathan has been staring at him for so long and he can tell that his window to act is closing as Jonathan breaks eye contact and slides off of the hood of the car. It feels like time is moving in reverse as Steve moves to follow him, his feet hitting the ground solidly as he stands next to Jonathan, who has turned back to look at him.

“Steve, I just want-” Jonathan starts, but Steve doesn’t give him the chance to finish the sentence. 

His head feels completely clear as he reaches out for Jonathan’s face, cradling it in his hands as he leans in and kisses him. Steve thinks it should be pretty unremarkable as kisses go, because it’s nothing more than a dry, insistent press of lips, but it isn’t. He knows without a doubt that it’s just because it’s Jonathan, and he tries not to let that freak him out.

Jonathan is so still Steve worries he’s somehow died standing up as he pulls back to be able to look at the other boy again. He’s still shaking a little and the high is returning as his adrenaline fades.

“That’s what I’m doing,” he says, his voice barely over a whisper. 

For a long moment, Jonathan just stares at him with wide eyes and a slightly open mouth. Steve hadn’t thought through the action, really, and as much as he feels like he and Jonathan are getting closer, he has no idea how he’ll react to Steve’s impulsivity. He thinks he should say something, maybe even apologize, but he isn’t sorry. He’s lost in his thoughts, but they still feel so foggy from the weed and the lingering anxiety. After a long moment, Jonathan starts speaking and pulls him out of his own head.

“Take me home, please.”

The words are softly spoken, but that doesn’t change their impact. Steve is shaking again and he finds it incredibly hard to swallow around the lump that’s formed in his throat. He moves silently towards the driver’s seat, but stops short of opening the door.

“I… can't,” he says, barely audible above the music still emanating from within the beemer. 

“What?” Jonathan asks. 

“I’m… we just smoked. We’re both too high to drive.”

Jonathan closes his eyes and Steve is scared for a moment that he might start to cry, but it passes when Jonathan opens them again and says, “Fine. We’ll wait until we sober up.”

“Jonathan, I-” Steve starts.

“Shut up, Steve.”

Steve closes his mouth on instinct, too used to what happens if he doesn’t shut up when he’s told to do so. Instead of saying anything else, he moves back to sit on the hood, dropping his head into his hands and letting out a shaky breath as his heels kick against the wheel. His back is to Jonathan, but he can hear Jonathan move to sit beside him at a safe distance. There are so many things he wants to say, because maybe he isn’t sorry that he kissed Jonathan, but he is sorry that they’re in this awkward situation now with no way out. Even though he knows it’s pointless, he tries to focus on feeling sober again so he can just take Jonathan home and promptly go back to the way things were before he had to go and do something as stupid as having feelings for Jonathan Byers. 

The last time Steve cried in front of another person, he was thirteen and standing behind Hawkins Middle with his head in his hands and his back against the jagged brick. He’d spent the entire night before studying for an English test, but he still knew he was going to fail it, so he’d decided to skip the class altogether. Classes were in session, so he hadn’t expected to let anyone see this private moment of weakness, but Steve’s plans had a history of not working out. As he’d cried, he’d heard the faint sounds of footsteps, and he couldn’t stop the tears before Carol turned the corner and met his eyes. Quickly, he’d wiped his face and looked away, hoping she wouldn’t say anything. Steve had known Carol well then, and he knew she wouldn’t be so kind. As expected, she stepped up to him, popping her gum and turning to lean against the building beside him.

“Aw, is it that time of the month, Stevie?” She had asked, and at that moment, things changed for Steve.

Carol told Tommy, then Tommy told Nicole, and soon his entire circle of friends was talking about how Steve Harrington was caught crying like a girl behind the school. The summer wiped everyone’s memories, it seemed, and Steve chose to leave the past behind in favor of popularity and protection, but he never forgot the way he felt standing in the bitterly cold air while Carol mocked him for his feelings. From that moment on, Steve swore to himself that he would never cry in front of another person again as long as he lived, opting instead to cry in the secrecy of the shower or his room in the middle of the night. 

It had been more than six years since that day, and Steve had never broken his promise to himself, save for the time he’d cried on the phone with Robin. He had chosen to believe she hadn’t known he’d been crying, but he has a feeling that won’t matter after tonight. Smoking weed always makes him tired and overemotional, and this rejection feels like no other he’d ever faced. The last thing he wants is to cry in front of Jonathan, but before he can stop himself, he’s shaking and tears are streaming down his face. It isn’t subtle and he knows it.

“Steve,” comes Jonathan’s voice, but Steve can’t reply with his face buried in his hands to muffle the sounds. “Steve,” Jonathan tries again, shifting closer to him on the hood.

“Don’t,” he says, his voice coming out harshly. “Don’t… try to let me down easy or whatever, okay? It’s fine. I screwed up. I’m sorry I made you uncomfortable,” he all but whispers. “I’ll take you home as soon as I’m sober.”

“What?” Jonathan says, truly sounding shocked.

“Just because you’re gay, that doesn’t mean you wanted that to happen,” Steve replies, his back still to Jonathan. Tears are still streaming down his face without his permission and he wishes more than anything he could just stop it already. “So I’m sorry. Really, I am.”

A hand comes to rest on Steve’s shoulder and he hates that he flinches at the touch. It’s a dead giveaway and he knows it, but he hopes Jonathan will leave it alone. He doesn’t pull back, instead tugging at Steve’s shoulder lightly to get him to turn around. 

“Just look at me,” Jonathan all but pleads, and Steve is powerless to deny him.

He turns, his eyes red and his cheeks wet with tears, saying, “If you’re gonna hit me again, just do it already.”

Jonathan visibly reels, looking at Steve so intensely that Steve feels like he’s peering straight into his brain. “I’m not gonna hit you,” he assures softly. “Just… I just don’t understand why you did it.”

“Because I wanted to, okay?” Steve says, immediately aggressive in his approach now that he can’t hide away to lick his wounds in relative privacy. “Because I wanted to last time we smoked, and at the diner, and in front of that fucking pretty boy who clearly wanted you earlier. I just wanted to and I never think anything through and I’m still high as shit, so I did it. And I’m sorry. I am.”

Jonathan is looking at him in a way no one ever has before, not even Robin, and Steve feels like he’s going to be sick all of a sudden. He feels so transparent right now, because he can’t lie anymore. There’s no more pretending, or hiding, or any of the stuff he used to do to keep himself safe. Now, there’s only fear, heartbreak, and everything else he’s tried so desperately for years to protect himself from. 

Before he can dwell on it any longer, Jonathan is bringing his hand up and wiping the tears off of Steve’s face, an action that almost sends him into another tailspin. Jonathan brushes them all away so delicately and then they’re just staring at each other, Steve’s damp face in Jonathan’s warm hand, and Steve can’t breathe. He opens his mouth to tell Jonathan he doesn’t have to do that, but he can’t get the words out because Jonathan’s lips are on his, soft and almost desperate. Trying not to overthink it, Steve kisses him back, turning more fully so that he can get the angle right. His hands reach for Jonathan’s waist and Jonathan moves a hand up into his hair, and Steve _really_ can’t breathe now.

When they part, they’re both breathing heavily, almost enough to drown out the noise of the tape deck clicking from inside the car, but not quite. Jonathan looks through the windshield and drops his hands, putting space between them as he says, “I better go get that before it ruins the tape.”

“Yeah, sure. Yeah,” Steve says dimly, hardly able to process everything that’s just happened.

Jonathan slides off of the hood and slips into the car, ejecting the tape and leaning his head out to say, “Um, I feel like I could drive now, actually. Do you?”

It’s late and Steve’s head is spinning, but he knows it’s not from the drugs, so he nods. “Yeah. Um, I can take you home.”

Steve heads for the driver’s seat, wordlessly getting in and starting the engine up. The noise is loud in the empty parking lot, and it makes Steve jump even though he had known it was coming. Without the tape playing, the car is silent as he drives towards town, both he and Jonathan keeping their mouths shut the entire way back to the Byers’ house. They arrive too soon for Steve’s liking and he doesn’t know what to say now that they’re stopped and he can’t just focus on not crashing his car and killing them both. 

“Call me in the morning?” Jonathan finally says, popping the door open as he looks at Steve.

Steve nods and gives a small smile that Jonathan returns, albeit nervously. “Sure. I’ll just… yeah. I’ll call you in the morning.”

Jonathan steps out without another word, leaving Steve to drive himself home and wonder what the hell had happened tonight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> is 30k words in too soon for a kiss?
> 
> i know that i've said this before, but this is my favorite chapter. thank u to my love my light liam for supporting me always and making sure i don't sound like a dummy and to em, sarah, han, and mia for letting me scream about stonathan i could not do this without all of u
> 
> as always, i would love to hear your thoughts!! i'm also on tumblr over at steveharringtonkin.tumblr.com


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